


Secrets In The Closet

by katesfire



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Baby Fic, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, KJ/C, Post-Episode: s07e25 Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager), Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 06:06:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17136380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katesfire/pseuds/katesfire
Summary: Returning to the Alpha Quadrant doesn't exactly hold the happiness that Kathryn has been anticipating... especially when cleaning out her closet holds a secret that she had forgotten about.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is for my sis N, whom I love and adore and has given me five beautiful nephews and two nieces to spoil and love and cherish. This is also for my sis-Ruby who is my beta and making the voyage from Cali to Michigan for two weeks of winter wonderland fun (I think it is your fault the snow keeps falling…)  
> This is J/C with a little C/7 and brief J/Other(invented character). This is unconventional baby-fic and is most certainly NC-17  
> Paramount and Viacom own it all… I just release the chastity belts so the characters can play. J Enjoy!

Cleaning out her quarters was a task she met with apprehension about the future and remorse over the past seven years. Yes, she was certainly happy to have accomplished her mission to see her crew, most of her crew, home. She recalled the faces of those buried among foreign stars and in the soil of distant worlds. So, of the whole, she had failed some. She knew their crew manifest had already been transferred to Starfleet and even before they were scheduled to disembark, next-of-kin would be notified. She tried to call up the image of the now widowed Mrs. Carey and her two boys, tried to feel the intense mourning that would instantly attack her when the true realization set in that her husband had not come home. Yes, she had already been aware he was dead, but to see the rest of the crew disembark into the arms of loved ones and not be able to share in that joy with her own husband would be like ripping the mourning heart open all over again. The feeling was bitter and the imagined faces of all of those who would mourn all over again with Voyager’s return had haunted her sleep since they had come through the conduit and found themselves facing a fleet of their own.  


Then there was the question of her future. Was she to be lauded as a hero for bringing Voyager home--for opening the door to new races, for making friends in an unknown Quadrant, for surviving the challenges of the unknown and perilous? Or was she to be condemned for the decisions she’d made under the duress of the unknown that violated the Prime Directive, chastised for the enemies they’d made, damned for the lives she’d allowed to slip through the cracks and, worse yet, face a court martial and stripped of her rank and commission for teaming up with the rogue Maquis whom she had been sent to capture?  


And, then what? After Starfleet promoted or demoted her, then what? What was left here for her? Mark had moved on, married and probably had children, Molly’s pups had all gone to homes and she was probably ailing, if even alive at all. Sure, she had the warm, welcoming arms of her mother and sister, both of whom she loved dearly, but what else? Somehow, she always managed to lose the men she loved through death or alienation. First her father and Justin, then Mark because she chose to care more for the Ocampa than the lives and families of her crew, then… she couldn’t bear to think about him.  


How could he not realize he was the laughingstock of the crew? He was chasing a woman who was nearly young enough to be his own daughter and they all knew it. Some resented him, and she got the distinct feeling it wasn’t just because of the debts they had to settle up with Tom Paris over. In nearly seven years, not one woman on the crew had made a move on him. It was an unspoken understanding among everyone that he was meant for their Captain. Onboard a ship, the holodeck could only provide so much entertainment. It was natural for them to amuse themselves with musings over the suspected personal lives of their crewmates, especially that of their captain and first officer. And their being stranded together on New Earth did nothing but exacerbate the rumors.  


Exacerbated or not, some of the rumors were so close to truth, it hit home and hard when she thought of those idyllic days stranded on the planet, especially after the storm had destroyed her ability to do her research so that they might leave. The bathtub, the headboard for her bed, the little things he did to try to make her as comfortable as possible. And she had fallen for him.  
As she knelt to clean out the bottom of her closet, her hand made contact with the cold metal of a small container and she felt chills run down her spine. She had forgotten. How could she have forgotten? Her heart palpitated, her chest constricted, her stomach fluttered and she felt dizzy.  


She slowly pulled the small stasis container from the back, seeing the bright yellow data chip dangling from where it had been affixed to the handle. She was glad to see the status lights blinking brightly. In all of their trials and tribulations, it hadn’t malfunctioned. The gravitational device in the bottom had kept it secured in the dark corner of her closet.  


Memories of uncertainty, of fear invaded her mind.  


_She stood, facing forward, ramrod stiff. Her uniform had never felt as constricting as it did now. It was like a large snake, wrapping around her, suffocating the woman she had become over the last several weeks. She was, once again, the Captain of Voyager. The needs, desires and good of her ship and crew came first. She didn’t have room in that protocol defined life for a love affair, especially not one with her first officer. She allowed herself to look at him, meeting his eyes, the look of remorse she offered was the last shard remaining of the woman he had encouraged her to be. It was the only way she could say goodbye to him. The words were iced in her throat and wouldn’t come without a torrent of tears which her uniform wouldn’t allow her to cry.  
_

_The grip of the transporter swept them away from idyllic mornings in the sunshine, lazy afternoons by the river and passionate kisses under the starlight, and returned them to the world of regulation, protocol, cold and metallic. When she inhaled again, she was in the brightly lit sickbay on her ship, facing the Doctor and Kes. With minimal conversation, she submitted to their tests and scans, making certain the medication they had been given worked to sure their strange infection from the insect bite. When it was through, Chakotay had been released, but the Doctor had detained her, requesting a private conference in his office.  
_

_“Captain, I have a couple of personal questions to ask you. The physical I performed showed recent sexual activity…”  
_

__

_“The sexual activity was consensual, Doctor. Are we finished?” The last thing she wanted was to stand there while he questioned Chakotay’s honor as a man. The torment of trying to closet this event was already upon her. Surely he was aware that they could not continue their relationship now that they were back on Voyager, but what of the crew? The rumor mill must have been running wild with suspected events that had taken place while they were marooned.  
_

__

_“There’s just one more thing, Captain. You’re pregnant. The fetus’ gestational age is approximately two weeks.”  
_

__

_Frozen. Breath failed to pass through her lips, lungs forgot to draw air, heart skipped several beats. Pregnant. Pregnant. Two weeks. It wasn’t possible, it wasn’t… “Are, are you sure?” she whispered, almost too low to be audible to anyone.  
_

__

_“The medical tricorder is a precise instrument…”  
_

__

_“I am aware of that, Doctor,” she snapped, finding the sharp commanding tone in her voice once again. “You haven’t informed the commander, have you?”  
_

__

_“No, but I believe you should,” he replied, handing her a PADD with detailed report of her physical.  
_

__

_She glanced at the PADD and thumbed to delete the report. “No. He is not to know. Right now, I have to get to the bridge, but I will be back to resolve this problem.”  
_

__

_“Captain, under Starfleet medical regulation 935.112, both parents are equal parties in deciding the fate of an unborn child. I am bound by this regulation to inform the commander of the existence of the fetus and your intention to terminate the pregnancy.”  
_

__

_She stared him down, her frosty glare had none of the withering effect it usually had on the flesh and blood members of her crew. She was cornered and it wasn’t a position she favored finding herself in. “Doctor,…”  
_

__

_“I’m sorry, Captain. Parental rights over a fetus were extended to both parents in the late twenty-first century. It was decided that a woman could not terminate a pregnancy without the expressed consent of the father.”  
_

__

_Her mind was reeling at light speed. Pregnant. She couldn’t have a baby with Chakotay, not here, not now! And she knew the ultimate outcome if she told him. He would never agree to her terminating the pregnancy.  
_

__

_The universe had a cruel sense of humor. She had always planned to get around to motherhood, had always figured there would be time for the days of diapers and bottles later in her life. Now, she was realizing that motherhood was a desire she may never achieve because she had stranded them in this strange quadrant. Having a baby on Voyager was completely out of the question.  
_

__

_“I’ll take care of this, Doctor, in my own way. Please, do not tell him. It should be me,” she said, regaining her strength.  
_

__

_He regarded her with his typical grim expression and nodded curtly. “All right. I will see you back in two weeks for a prenatal check up. Here is a list of supplements I would advise you to begin taking.” He passed another PADD into her hands.  
_

__

_Without further argument, she took it and left sickbay, only to barely avoid colliding with her waiting first officer. She searched his face for signs that he was aware. Could he hear through the bulkhead? When his face was not suspect, she tried to relax. Her muscles were coiled tighter than when she had first stepped foot inside of Admiral Paris’ office.  
_

__

_“Is there something wrong, Kath-Captain?”  
_

__

_She forgave his near slip. It had been months since he had called her captain. “No, Commander, the Doctor just had a few follow up questions for me.”  
_

__

_“How do you plan to deal with Mr. Tuvok?”  
_

__

_She had nearly forgotten about that. This wasn’t the first time her devoted friend had stepped out of line for her benefit. She didn’t intend a harsh punishment for him, in this instance. She could only imagine the duress he had been under from the crew to contact the Vidiians in hopes of a cure. It warmed her heart to feel so loved by her crew.  
_

__

_“I am not certain yet. I hardly think punishment is in order,” she replied as they made their way to the turbolift.  
_

__

_“Agreed.”  
_

__

_And then there was silence. They stepped into the lift without another word and the entire ride to the bridge was passed silently. Silence so loud it echoed in her ears; each of them with their thoughts. She wished she were Betazoid at that moment. What was he thinking? They used to read each other so well, had become accustomed to the nuisances of everyday life with each other, could finish each other’s sentences. Now, she felt like they were practically strangers in a strange, new environment. They had been lovers--how were they supposed to detach that from who they were? She wasn’t one to take lovers lightly and when she did, she meant it to be a long term arrangement, and she knew he was the same. So, here they were, caged in red and black, two stars that had fallen into the same orbit now being ripped apart, unwillingly, even violently, by professional distance.  
_

__

_She nearly asked for the computer to halt the lift. She was going to tell him. She was going to tell him how much she loved him, that she was willing to take the risk of a relationship on Voyager, that they were going to be parents. But before she could, the doors swooshed open and deposited them on the bridge and the moment had passed. She assumed command of her ship, shared a word with Tuvok, then began barking orders. She was determined to let everyone know with her first appearance on the bridge that nothing, absolutely nothing, had changed._

Kathryn continued to stare at the container. The plan she decided upon had been put on hold when Seska and the Kazon had taken control of Voyager. She had fully expected to miscarry when they had been deposited on the hellish planet with the hungry snake-beasts.  


When she’d finally allowed herself to be examined by the Doctor, she was shocked to learn that the fetus was thriving and growing. Apparently her little secret didn’t much mind strange eggs and worms for dinner. He had pressured her again, asking her if she had told the Commander of the secret she carried within her womb, even asked her if she cared to know the sex. She replied in the negative to both, informing him that she hadn’t had the time with the mess with the Kazon and trying to track down Chakotay’s son. She had privately puzzled the irony of the fact that the woman he loathed and the woman he loved were both having his children only months apart. Even when she agreed to try to locate the child spawn of Seska’s cruelty, she briefly envisioned the two children growing up together on Voyager, both calling out ‘mother’ and both expecting her to answer.  


It was a relief to hear that Chakotay had not fathered the child Seska had bore, but that didn’t cure her current situation. The fetus was around three months old, now, and something had to be done about it. She was already feeling the maternal hormones effects on her body. 

  


_“I will see you this evening for the procedure, Doctor.”  
_

__

_“Don’t forget that I cannot perform the pregnancy termination without the consent of both parents, Captain.”  
_

__

_“I have not forgotten. I will tell Chakotay this afternoon, now that things have calmed down and repairs to the ship are underway.”  
_

__

_She had a tedious task ahead of her. With the engineering and ops crews working around the clock in various sectors of the ship, sickbay would be undisturbed. All crewmembers that had been injured during their horrendous experience on the planet had been treated and released. Kes was easy enough to work around because when Alpha shift went off duty, she was honing her mental abilities with Tuvok for at least two hours.  
_

__

_Upon entering her quarters, she sat down at her terminal and began paging through the EMH’s programming, various texts and documents that provided the information for his ethical subroutines. It took longer than she planned, but she found the regulation he spoke of, and removed it from his programming, along with any legal references. She stored them in a backup file so that she could re-input them when she was through.  
_

__

_This was something she had to do alone. She couldn’t tell Chakotay that she was carrying their child. She couldn’t ask him to allow her to terminate the pregnancy. He would never understand her reasoning. Having a child on Voyager made her vulnerable. It wasn’t as though she weren’t careful about preserving the lives of her crew, but they were trained officers. They knew that a life in Starfleet was never a certain thing. Each of them was aware of their mortality and had pledged to give it up to serve the greater need of the Federation if called upon. What happened if she had to consider a child, a lover? What if she inadvertently chose a course of action that caused the death of either of them? How could she be expected to function in the best interest of her ship and crew under those circumstances?  
_

____

_She knew him. She knew his argument and she didn’t need to have this discussion with him face to face. She knew he would tell her that what she wanted to do was murder, that he would never forgive her for killing the precious being created of their love, that she was being selfish, reckless, that she was robbing from him the one thing he had always desired.  
_

_____ _

_Always desired. There was another equation she hadn’t considered. How would she feel about herself in the aftermath of what she planned to do? Could she kill what could potentially be her only chance at motherhood? In fairness to the child, the life she would be affording it could be short, could be wrought with disaster. It had tore her heart to watch the way Samantha had suffered on the hell planet, watching her infant grow sick, uncertain whether she would live through the experience. As Captain, how could she expect to make judgments with an unclouded mind when she had a child who was sick, potentially dying?  
_

______ _ _

_No. Her desires for motherhood were selfish. It wasn’t fair to bring a child into this situation. She never would have told Samantha what decision to make in regards to whether or not to have Naomi, but this was her decision. The fate of her crew could be riding on this one decision, and she knew, as much as it pained her deep down, what the right one was.  
_

_______ _ _ _

_She finished writing the programming for the Doctor to perform the procedure without comment or question and covered her tracks in the computer system, then left her quarters for sickbay.  
_

________ _ _ _ _

_When she entered, the lights had been dimmed for the night cycle. She changed into a medical gown and activated the Doctor. He instructed her to lay on a biobed and readied the instruments, programming the fetal transport that would remove the fetus from her womb as though it had never been once development had been terminated.  
_

_________ _ _ _ _ _

_“Are you ready, Captain?”  
_

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

_She swallowed, knowing she would be awake for the procedure. She inhaled deeply, wanting to give the affirmative, but visions of a little girl danced in her head, stealing her voice as she gazed with her mind’s eye at the child in wonderment. Long, raven black hair billowed about her as she danced, her sun-kissed skin shimmered, golden brown, blue eyes, like stars, laughed joyously. This was her daughter. Their daughter. She gasped.  
_

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_“Doctor, the sex of the baby, please,” she asked, her voice foreign to her ears as it left her throat.  
_

____________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_“The fetus is female, Captain. Do you still wish to proceed with the termination?”  
_

_____________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_She was swimming in future visions of the child she was planning to kill, watching her as she grew, dancing in the sunshine in the shallow waters of Lake George, holding a tennis trophy as she exchanged flushed glances with a young man in the crowd, fastening the pip to the collar of a Cadet’s uniform, dressed in white while her mother fixed a flower in her hair…  
_

______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_“I can’t,” she decided, a tear rolling down her face. “But I can’t have a baby here.” She was conflicted. Then, the scientist part of her brain kicked into overdrive and she knew how she could save their baby._

______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

She was in there, encapsulated in a metal, temperature-regulated womb, frozen in time. The stasis chamber had been the only option. Now, here she was, sitting on the floor of her quarters, holding the unit that had protected her and Chakotay’s daughter from the atrocity she had nearly committed. She had restored the Doctor’s programming to its original form and had removed his memories of the entire event, downloaded his logs in regards to her pregnancy and stored them on the data chip affixed to the stasis chamber. No one knew of her secret. She had erased all evidence of the fact that she had returned from New Earth with child.  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

And, she had never told Chakotay. How did one broach that kind of topic? And now, when she could tell him, should tell him, it was impossible. What would he think of her if she barged into his quarters and told him? What would she say? ‘Oh, by the way, when we came back from New Earth, I was pregnant with your child, but I never told you all this time because I altered the Doctor’s program to have it terminated and chickened out at the last minute, so she has been floating around in a stasis container and I just never got around to telling you about it’?  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He had made his choice in Seven. Let them reproduce, let them marry. Even if he was the man she loved, wanted, felt was her match, her soulmate, she could give him away. She had experienced her fair share of grief and hurt, losing all of the men she loved. She had been right not to get involved with him while they were on Voyager because then he may not have made it back alive. That was a common trait with the men she loved. She even lost Cheb to Starfleet out of his jealousy. Had she ever not made it clear that her career came first? Had she ever mislead them into believing that she would set it all aside for a love affair? The only man who had been semi understanding of her love of the job had been Mark. They had come and gone from each other’s lives from childhood. They were both independent and knew not to have lofty expectations that the other would sacrifice that independence. It had worked for them.  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

And of her and Chakotay? On New Earth, she would have been happy to drown in her love for him. Once her research equipment was gone, Starfleet had been history and she had been free to be Kathryn, just Kathryn. She’d never experienced such a freedom in her life and she had reveled in it. They had swum naked in the river and had made love outside in the broad daylight. Once she was free of her bonds to the career she had chosen, she learned what it was like to breathe again, to live for herself and not the organization. She learned that tasks didn’t have to be compartmentalized and sometimes it was okay to drop everything and lose herself to his caresses, his kisses. It was okay to leave the dishes on the table when they finished dinner to gaze at the strange stars, clothed only by the shadows cast upon them by the leaves of the trees and the moonlight.  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Had she allowed their torrid love affair to continue, how long would it have been before they missed a crucial bridge call? What would the crew have said when they realized their captain and commander spent all of their off hours entwined in each other’s arms, nestled in each other’s beds?  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The thought of Seven occupying the place in his life that had all but been promised to her when they returned home left a foul taste in her mouth. She had been willing to wait eternally for him. Why couldn’t he have made good on his promise to her, why couldn’t he have waited just a few months longer?  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

When she’d had their daughter placed in stasis, she had envisioned a future when they would return home, she would tell him everything and he would understand. They would see the doctor, have their tiny baby girl returned to her womb, marry, and become parents. In her visions, it was perfect. She saw herself on a biobed, her mother and Phoebe showering her with flowers and gifts, Chakotay, beaming proudly at his wife and tiny daughter.  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Now, those visions and dreams from long ago were swept away like clouds in a prevailing wind. Sure, they were home, but what was it to be home if none of the dreams she had put on hold would manifest themselves in her reality?  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Perhaps Admiral Janeway had been right and this reality was better than the one she had prevented from happening, but how much better? Could this future really turn out better? She couldn’t summon the hope from within that was required to believe that it could.  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

So, that left her with, now what? The Doctor had told her the stasis container had a self-sustaining power source that would last for ten years, which was the approximate viability of the fetus within. He said he didn’t trust the fragile cells not to degrade and cause birth defects past that ten year deadline.  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Kathryn knew she could always restore his memory of some of the events, perhaps with a few alterations, and have him implant the fetus into her womb, treat her with pregnancy hormones to accelerate her body to where it should be at the end of the first trimester, but then what? Then there was the impossibility of explaining to Chakotay how she was pregnant with his child after all these untouchable years. Or not explain it to him. But, that left her the alternative of coming up with a story to explain why she was pregnant and the father was unaccounted for.  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

No. She was tired of lying. He deserved to know the truth, even if it meant him hating her, even if it meant trouble in his and Seven’s relationship. She had kept this a secret for far too long, and now, she had to tell him.  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“Janeway to Chakotay.”  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“Chakotay here. What can I do for you, Captain?”  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Ouch. So formal, so professional. She hadn’t expected that on the eve of their return to Federation space. His tone was dry and not at all friendly. “I was wondering if you could stop by my quarters for a chat. I have a couple of things that would like to discuss with you before we disembark.”  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“I am very busy packing, Captain, unless it’s an urgent matter.”  


______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“Chakotay, we need to talk.”

______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


	2. Chapter 2

“I think the time has passed, Kathryn.”  


She would never get over the way her name sounded from his lips. It was like being wrapped in satin. “This is very important. Please.” She was not going to beg him. If he refused her again, then the matter was closed. She would do what she saw fit and when he found her out, then she would reference this moment and remind him that she had tried to talk to him, but he hadn’t enough care or concern for what she had to say.  


“I’ll be right over.” He knew it wasn’t like her to persist in such a manner. She sounded almost desperate in her desire to speak with him. The only thing he could hope was that she would let them remember the moments they had shared as more than captain and first officer without being tainted by a final argument. They had done a lot of that later in the years, their closeness evaporating to a cool remnant of what it had once been.  


Then, the night after he had been traveling through the ship when it had been shattered in to different time fragments and they had shared the Antarian cider, he had found himself growing hopeful towards the end of the night, ready to call an end to the newly budding relationship between himself and Seven upon Kathryn’s word. The ball had been in her court; all he had been waiting for was her to serve it to him. And she had dismissed him with a shy gratitude and a polite word of thanks for the evening. 

That’s when he decided he would never again lay his heart out on his sleeve for her. He knew then that they could never be more than the sum of what they had become.  


So what was he dropping everything to go see her for? Sure, he wasn’t that busy, just packing personal belongings, but to stop his task to see her in her quarters? If it had been a call to the bridge or her ready room, he would have already been there, but not to her quarters.  


He imagined the conversation they were about to have--her confessing how tormented she had been all these years, denying her feelings and denying him, but now that she was free to pursue a relationship, she wanted him. And how was he to respond? Just accept the gift she was bestowing upon him, after all of the tortured years of loving her from a distance, knowing she wasn’t being fair to him or herself? All of a sudden they had arrived home and that was supposed to make the years of longing and despair over the missed time vanish. He could not be her lapdog like that. His emotions were not some kind of switch she could flip whenever she felt like it. He had moved on, had found a woman he could love unconditionally all the time, not just at her convenience.  


He didn’t know what he would say to Kathryn, how he would be able to let her down without hurting her, but had she cared about how much she had hurt him over the years? Had it eaten her raw? No. He just had to remain strong and remind himself that their opportunity had been presented more than once and had passed at her insistence. He had to remember that he had a woman he could love and nurture to become everything he desired.  
When he entered her quarters, she felt frozen. Her heart skipped a beat. For years, she had denied her feelings for him, forced him to closet his for her. She wanted to take him in her arms, tell him she loved him, share her secret with him and watch their future unfold happily ever after. That was how it was supposed to be. It was how she wanted it to be, but from the look on his face, he had turned her out. There was no warmth, nothing but professionalism. She had lost him. That much was clear and it was nearly enough for her to ice her reason for calling him over.  


“Would you like a drink, Chakotay?” she asked, politely as she made her way to the replicator. “I’m having a strong whiskey.”  


Whiskey? Now she had his mind reeling. The last time he had caught her drinking whiskey was when they had been in the void and it hadn’t been a pretty sight. “Darjeeling, please.” He could stay and afford her one drink, even if he was choosing the sober route.  


She wasn’t surprised by his choice of tea over the drink. It wasn’t often that he partook in beverages of the alcoholic nature. She ordered up his tea and a glass with ice cubes for herself while she opened a cupboard to the side of the replicator and pulled out an authentic bottle of Jameson Rarest Vintage Reserve and poured a double.  


What exactly was she trying to kill? Pain, sorrow? It was bad if simply her choice of drink for this conversation was sending his mind questioning and reeling.  


She knocked back a swallow, loving the tingle on her tongue, the velvet comfort followed by the burn that traced its path straight down to her stomach, warming her within. Yes, this was what she needed. Something that burned sweetly, almost painfully, evoking a type of pleasure from within that she had only found once in her lifetime: in the forest on New Earth.  


“How are you doing? We really haven’t had much time to talk since we…”  


“Get on with it, Kathryn. I somehow suspect your asking me over wasn’t just to socialize,” he interrupted. He didn’t want to stand here and listen to her make small talk when he could have been putting together the pieces to move on with his future.  


She was startled by his demeanor, his impatience. She took a slow sip from her glass, her eyes never leaving him, burning into him. When had they become so unfamiliar with each other that they couldn’t share a social moment? She quenched her fury with the burn of the whiskey sliding down her throat, her eyes never leaving him as she watched his discomfort grow in the silence, under her sharp stare.  


When she felt she could continue amicably, she removed the glass from her lips and set it down on the table next to the stasis container, knowing if she continued to hold it in her hand she would eventually hurl it at him. Yes, they’d shared differences, yes she was aware he was seeing Seven, yes that pissed her off, but she had hoped that they could, at the very least, salvage a friendship but, in this moment, it appeared that wasn’t going to be possible.  


“This isn’t easy for me, Chakotay, so please just listen and hear me out.” She saw the protest rising to his lips, but she quickly continued. “Five years ago, I made a decision that I felt was in the best interest of the ship, the crew, and you and I without consulting you.”  


“It’s not like you haven’t done that on several occasions throughout our seven years in the Delta Quadrant.” He regretted his irritated comment when a look of pain flashed in her eyes. He wasn’t giving her a fair chance and he could now see that what she was trying to tell him was very difficult for her. He swallowed and offered her a look of apology and waited for her to continue.  


“The days we spent on New Earth were some of the happiest, most fulfilling days of my entire life. I regret nothing that we shared and, if circumstances were different at this point…” she bit her tongue. That was not the direction she wanted to go in. “Well, that’s not what matters. What does matter is what I never told you. When we returned from New Earth, I was pregnant.”  


Shock was a tangible feeling, at least in that moment it was for him. He felt as though he had just had an entire pitcher of ice water poured down his back. _Pregnant. How could she never have told him that she was pregnant… Was… Oh Spirits… she didn’t…_ Red began to rim his vision as he stared at her, the look of remorse on her face didn’t help his growing anger. He didn’t want to believe she could have done such a horrible thing… Didn’t want to believe she had killed their child… “Kathryn, you didn’t…”  


“The Doctor told me that regulations required your approval to have the pregnancy terminated. I was going to talk to you about it, but then Seska and the Kazon took the ship. When we got back, I was running out of time and I knew, after what she had done to you, I couldn’t approach you. That whole ordeal was the very reason why I wanted to terminate the pregnancy, but I knew the Doctor would never do it without your approval, so I modified his program, removed the legal texts and regulations from his database…”  


Her sentence was twisted into a scream, his hands were on her shoulders, slamming her against the bulkhead; his breath was hot with fury as he breathed into her face, his eyes crazed with hate.  


“You _killed_ our child without even _consulting_ me?!” he raged. He didn’t remember lunging at her, didn’t remember viciously grabbing her. His eyes burned, his muscles clenched in rage, his mind was reeling. How could he have loved someone who could be so cold, so heartless to murder a child?  


“I tried to, but I couldn’t!” she shrieked, her voice reaching a fearful shrill she hadn’t known was possible. She had never seen him like this and she was suddenly very afraid of him, but his grip on her suddenly failed and she barely caught herself on her shaky knees. She hadn’t anticipated the tears that stole down her cheeks. “I was laying on the biobed and I saw her, Chakotay. I saw our daughter, I saw her whole life flash before my eyes, and I couldn’t do it, but I couldn’t risk bringing her into a life on Voyager. I didn’t want to risk losing her.”  


“Kathryn, I don’t understand… if you didn’t…” he couldn’t bring himself to even think about what she had tried to do, “then where is she?”  


She struggled to regain her composure as she stepped towards the table with the stasis container upon it. “When I saw her in my mind, I knew I had to save her. I decided the best course of action was to preserve her in a stasis chamber. After the procedure, I restored the Doctor’s program and downloaded all of his memories of my ever being pregnant and the procedure and wiped it from his program. I was hoping that when we got home…” she trailed off, knowing what she had hoped for five years ago was not to blossom into reality now.  


Chakotay stared at the container in wonderment, forgetting his anger towards Kathryn. He turned his anger inward, hating himself just a little for doubting her, for believing she could commit an atrocity such as killing their child. No matter what course their relationship had taken, he knew that, underneath the frigid command exterior, there was a warm, loving woman, somewhere. He still was angry she had kept such a secret from him for so long, but that didn’t matter at the moment.  


“What are your plans now, Kathryn?”  


_Certainly different than they were a few months ago,_ was what she wanted to reply. “The fetus is viable for another five years. I know I want to give her life, I just don’t know when.”  


They couldn’t have a child together now! What would Seven think? Their relationship was still in the fledgling state, how would she deal with learning that Kathryn was going to birth his child, even if she did listen long enough to let him explain the details of how it was happening?  


The only thing that made sense was for them to have the child together, but he couldn’t do that either. He couldn’t lie and say his feelings for Kathryn Janeway were completely dead, but how could he ever trust that he and their daughter would be put first in her life? Starfleet had always come first to her, had always taken priority over even her own heart. What did that say for the nurture and care she could give a child, an infant who would need her unconditionally? What would that say for any man who became her husband? He couldn’t imagine how devastating it was for Mark to believe all those years that he had lost her to Starfleet. He had remembered breathing life into her lungs, thinking she was going to die in his arms on that stormy planet, remembered the tears of anguish that had poured down his face onto her cheeks… He couldn’t deal with that chance, couldn’t watch a child of theirs grow up without a mother because she was off exploring the stars or negotiating treaties or because she had been blasted into stardust by some hostile species.  


“I think you should give her to me, Kathryn.”  


She gazed at him curiously, wondering what he would do with the fetus without her; then his intentions slammed home. “Never,” she growled; her voice as rough as gravel. “I will not give you my daughter so that you and Seven can play house.”  


“Well it’s better than letting her waste away in a stasis container until you _get around_ to making a decision about her future. If she were implanted in Seven, we could give her a life and a home that a Starfleet captain never could!” he argued.  


“No. That is not an option.”  


“Now that you have involved me, leaving her to _expire_ in a stasis container is not an option either.”  


“I do not intend to allow her to _expire_. I’ll decide what to do on my terms when I am ready. I’m sorry. It was a mistake involving you.”  


“We’ll see about that, Kathryn,” he snapped, leaving her quarters without another word.  


He wasn’t sure what he was feeling. He felt like a mass of utter confusion and felt lost as to where he could turn. This wasn’t something he could discuss with Seven. Normally, he would discuss issues of this nature with Kathryn, but that wasn’t an option for him either, obviously. He didn’t want to trouble B’Elanna, since she was enjoying her time with her new daughter and husband. That left him with the option of talking to Tuvok or Harry Kim and neither appealed to him in regards to a discussion of this level of emotional turmoil. Tuvok would tell him he was being illogical and Harry would be dumbfounded and lost. All he knew was that if he ever wanted to see this child born, he would have to take matters into his own hands.  


She slammed back the rest of her whiskey and poured herself another, then sat down and stared at the container that encapsulated their daughter. Thoughts raced through her mind, anxiety was never a friend of hers and now it seemed to be trickling in, threatening to flood her with a torrent of ‘what ifs’. She wondered what Chakotay had meant by his last comment. There was only one course of action now. “Computer, has B’Elanna Torres been released from sickbay?”  


“Affirmative.”  


“Disable the EMH program, authorization Janeway Pi One-One-Zero.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Emergency Medical Holographic program disabled.”  


Quickly, she called up the Doctor’s program and inserted the chip containing the memories of her pregnancy into her terminal and set to work on modifying his program, one last time. This was the only thing she could do to see that Chakotay couldn’t take their daughter away from her and have her implanted into Seven.  


She didn’t want to risk Chakotay seeing her in the corridor, so she used a site to site transport for herself and the stasis container and found herself in sickbay, the Doctor stood ready with her programming instructions.  


“Are you ready to proceed, Doctor?”  


“While I am disturbed that you removed memories from my program, I am ready to perform the procedure to resume your pregnancy.”  


“I’m sorry, Doctor. I hope you understand that, at the time, it was necessary.”  


“As you say, Captain.”  


Without another word, she changed into a gown and slid onto a biobed, apprehension fluttering in the pit of her stomach. As she laid down on the biobed, she felt certain she was making the right decision for herself and her daughter.  


The Doctor injected her with a series of hyposprays, preparing her body for a sudden leap from normal to three months pregnant. The swelling in her breasts began almost instantly, painfully, her pelvic bones widening and her womb filling and stretching brought on horrific cramps. When it became unbearable, the Doctor injected her with a sedative. “It is imperative that you remain extremely still, Captain.”  


She nodded then watched as best as she could as he deactivated the stasis container and prepared the fetal transport to return her precious little girl to the warmth and safety in her womb. She tried to relax, tried to breathe normal. She knew she would feel nothing once the procedure was over, but after that, the changes would really begin and then she would start to feel the life within, growing, kicking. This wasn’t the ideal situation she had planned for but, in the words of Seven, she would adapt.  


“You will have to relax for a few days, let your body fully adjust, but that should do it, Captain. You are now the equivalent of three months pregnant with a healthy little girl.”  


Kathryn let her hands slid to the nearly invisible swell at her abdomen. No one else would see it, but she could feel the little pouch that had suddenly appeared with the procedure. “That was quick,” she whispered, awestruck at the reality of the situation. She had six months to prepare for motherhood. Six short months.  


“Yes, just about as quick as the traditional method of conception,” the Doctor commented, wryly. At her lack of amusement, he stowed the comedic question that had been poised to leave his holographic tongue--to ask her if, in a way, this made him a sort of holographic daddy since he, was responsible for her re-conception. “I have prepared a regiment of vitamins, minerals and caloric intake for the remainder of your pregnancy. Also, your consumption of caffeine is a point worthy of mention. Cut it down to one cup a day rather than one pot, please.”  


_One cup a day! Was he out of his holographic mind? But, she recoiled. This was for the good of her daughter. Begrudgingly, she nodded her acceptance of his suggestion.  
_

“Now, I will see you in two weeks for a post-procedural check up. If you notice anything that would seem unusual before that, I want you to notify me immediately.”  


“I understand, Doctor. Thank you,” she replied, knowing that in a few moments, he would, once again, be lacking memories of the events and her pregnancy. It was too risky to allow him to maintain those memories. If he told Chakotay what she had just done… She didn’t even want to think ahead to that conversation. For now, she had bigger issues to deal with, such as modification to the Doctor’s program again and hosting Admiral Paris for a visit to Voyager at oh-nine-hundred. Then there was the matter of reports due to Starfleet, debriefings, investigations, disembarking procedures, and hopefully a nice long respite for herself and her crew. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to lose herself in the quiet serenity of the Indiana countryside.

Three weeks later, that’s exactly where she found herself. Starfleet was still pouring through the massive amounts of data and picking apart the little technological advances they had come upon. The Doctor had been relocated to Starfleet Medical while they studied him, his program and the mobile emitter to see if the technology could be duplicated. They had deliberated and decided that, while not having the same freedom of mobility of Commander Data of the Enterprise, he was entitled to call himself sentient and the mobile emitter was an extension of his being not to be destroyed or revoked from him.  


The Maquis were another story. Starfleet was still deliberating their fate. They were certain the Cardassians would cry out that they should be turned over to them so they could be punished for their crimes, but the war was over and Cardassia was in no position to make demands. She had spoke to Admiral Paris on this case and had also fiercely advocated that the field commissions she had granted for those qualified be accepted and recognized. For the unqualified crewmen who only had on the job training, that they be permitted entrance into the academy if they so chose. Also, she requested that their criminal records be expunged.  


Her own fate was subject to their review of the ships' logs and the data in regards to the species they had made first contact with and her presentation of the Federation in a foreign Quadrant. Yes, there were incidences that violated the Prime Directive, but were the actions she took necessary to their unique situation? It was the answer to this question that would levy the determining decision in regards to the future of her career.  


What the Federation council decided were thoughts that came and went. She was more absorbed in truly relaxing for the first time in years. She could spend all day sitting on the antiquated porch swing with a mug of tea, the new vice that had been forced upon her, as she watched morning turn to afternoon and afternoon turn to evening. She was free to make decisions for herself and only herself rather than a ship full of people.  


The first week, her mother had fussed over her. Honestly, Kathryn believed that her mother, always the scientist, always the realist, believed if she turned her back, her eldest daughter would disappear into thin air. When Gretchen had finally accepted that she was really flesh and blood and not some trick of her imagination, she began to unwind and Kathryn could really relax.  


Phoebe had been a little more of a mystery, though that was her typical way and shouldn’t have come as a surprise. When she arrived from New Orleans, she had fussed over her for the first day, but after that, it was as though she had never left. She entertained her with tales of living in the French quarter, a perfect fit for the artist in her, and stories of the children. Kathryn was a bit relieved that Phoebe had come alone and had not brought her brood along with her. While Kathryn was excited to become reacquainted, and in some cases acquainted for the first time, with her nieces and nephews, she needed time to settle in and relax.  


She was surprised to find that her bedroom hadn’t changed since the last time she had slept in it. She had assumed, after the devastating news that Voyager had been classified as lost with all hands, her mother would have eventually cleaned out the room and changed it into something more functional for herself. Then again, she shouldn’t have been too surprised. Her father’s office was still the same as he had left it all those years ago. They never spoke of it, but Kathryn knew it was her way of coping with his loss, even after all of these years. Kathryn had even paid her respects to her father when she arrived at the house, not feeling ridiculous at all when she slid into the nook underneath his desk and curl up with the memories of a Starfleet Admiral’s daughter. There were times when she believed she could still smell his scent in the room, lingering like a warm blanket to comfort her. While there, she had talked to him, believing that, somehow, he was there with her in some way. She told him about the things she had done, great and terrible, told him about Chakotay, and how she was going to make him a grandfather, albeit in the most unconventional way.  


She still hadn’t told her mother. Even now, as Gretchen joined her on the porch swing to enjoy the sunset, she was unaware of the fact that in a few short months, she was going to be a grandmother again. How could she tell her what she had done? How could she tell her about New Earth and that she was carrying the child of a man who didn’t love her anymore?  


“You look like you’re a million light years away, Katie,” she said, settling herself on the swing and passing her a fresh cup of tea. “An interesting choice of vice for travel through the Delta Quadrant,” she added, taking a sip of the Darjeeling.  
Kathryn laughed. “I figured my body could use a break from the caffeine I normally ingest. I am surprised the Ferengi haven’t figured out how to corner the caffeine market. If they did, they would have been rich in latinum from me alone!”  


“There was a time when I couldn’t keep enough coffee in this house.” Gretchen laughed a little herself, remembering that it wasn’t just Kathryn who had consumed the sharp, pungent liquid by the gallon full. Edward had been quite the coffee drinker himself.  


“Don’t clean out the cupboards yet, Mom. Old habits die hard.” And it was true. She missed the dark, thick aroma of a fresh pot of black coffee, the bitter taste that awakened her senses, the jolt of caffeine that revitalized her in moments of fatigue.  


“Now if that isn’t the truth, I don’t know what is!”  


Kathryn turned away from the slowly disappearing Indiana sun and gazed at her mother, not certain what to make of her tone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  


“I had a comm from Chakotay today. He is a pleasant man, if I ever met one, and roguishly handsome, too. It’s a wonder you even wanted to come back to Earth with a man like him around. It just goes to show, Katie, that you had your pretty little head packed full of regulations and protocol and failed to see what was right in front of you.”  


Kathryn was taken aback at the boldness of her mother’s assumptions and comments. It was almost as though she had been reading her personal logs. It became clear that the look of surprise must have registered clearly on her face. “What did he say to you?”  


“Nothing at all. Actually, he asked after you, wanted to know how you were doing, if you were in good health, though he insisted that he didn’t have time to speak with you. So tell me, why wouldn’t you settle down with a man like him? It is very clear he cares a great deal about you.”  


She swallowed hard. Damn her hormones. “Not enough,” she replied, quietly.  


“I beg your pardon?”  


“Mom, this really isn’t a topic I want to discuss,” she said, trying to evade it. She didn’t know how to explain the situation at this point. It wasn’t something she had completely worked out in her mind yet.  


“Old habits do die hard. This isn’t the first time Starfleet has stood in the way of your finding happiness with a man,” Gretchen commented. “Let me guess, you had ten thousand reasons why and only one main reason why not.”  
What was she supposed to say? When it came right down to it, she was right and Kathryn couldn’t discount that. “I had to remember who I was, what I was doing out there. I couldn’t let myself get swept up in a romance.”  


“But you might have lived the rest of your life out there. You would have denied yourself love, happiness, a family?”  


“But we didn’t. We made it home.”  


“And, yet for some reason, this handsome man is still absent from your life,” Gretchen observed.  


Kathryn couldn’t help the tear that escaped down her cheek and the fading light brought it to the attention of her mother before she could hastily wipe it away. “He doesn’t want me,” she whispered.  


“I think you might be surprised.” Gretchen wrapped an arm around her eldest daughter's shoulder. She was so much like her father. Duty came before everything else, even if it meant self-sacrifice.  


“No. Mom, I did something terrible. I… He…” She paused, taking a deep breath to center herself. “When we were into our second year of our journey, Chakotay and I became infected with a disease and, to continue living, we had to remain on the planet where the insect thrived that had infected us. There was something in the planet’s atmosphere that shielded us from becoming sick. So, there we remained for months. I continued trying to find a cure while Chakotay was intent on making the planet our home. I fought him and all of the little changes he was making to try to make us more comfortable. Eventually, a terrible plasma storm devastated my ability to continue my research and I started to accept living there, with him, for the rest of my life. We had always had a dynamic relationship and I knew he was the most exciting man I had ever known. I was afraid of what a relationship between us would mean. I was afraid of losing myself in him. And, one night, I did. I finally admitted to myself and him that I loved him. For weeks, we explored our love and each other. Then, Voyager returned for us with a cure and we had to step back into our professional lives. I couldn’t carry on with our relationship and I know I hurt him, but I left it open for when we returned home.”  


“So what’s the problem now? You’re home, invite him for dinner.”  


“It’s what I did after we got back to Voyager. I found out I was pregnant. I knew I couldn’t tell him about it. I tried to terminate the pregnancy, but I couldn’t. I had the Doctor remove the fetus and place her in stasis and I never told anyone, until I was packing up my quarters and found the stasis container I had forgotten. I knew I had to tell Chakotay. I called him over and told him, and he became angry. You see, in the last few months, he became intimately involved with Seven. Mom, he wanted me to give him my baby to be implanted into her!”  


“Oh Kathryn.” Gretchen was aghast. She wasn’t sure what to say to everything her daughter had spilled on her. “What did you do with the baby?” After hearing the story, she was almost afraid to ask.  


Kathryn, with tears shining in her eyes, took her mother’s hand and placed it on the gentle swell of her belly. She was nearing the end of the fetus’ fourth month and had just begun to feel the butterfly wings of life moving about within. “She’s right here, Mom.”  


Relieved, Gretchen pulled her daughter into a hug. The how of it all didn’t matter, what mattered was she was going to be a Grandma all over again and her eldest daughter was finally going to realize her dream to become a mother. “I take it Chakotay doesn’t know you resumed the pregnancy?”  


“No, he doesn’t and I don’t intend to tell him, either.” There was finality in her voice that made it perfectly clear that the subject was not open to discussion.

This was one place he never thought he would find himself: standing before Admiral Elizabeth Porter as she read his motion to move for custody of his unborn child of one Captain Kathryn Janeway. The details in the motion were, to say the least, quite embarrassing for him. He had recounted their stay on the planet they called New Earth, the depth of his feelings for this woman who was Starfleet’s latest heroine, the decline of their relationship and her admission of what she had done in regards to their unborn child. He felt like he was doing her an injustice, tarnishing her perfectly glimmering current reputation, but part of him didn’t really give a damn. She had been wrong. She’d had no right to do what she did. She had broken the child protection laws a number of different ways, violated his rights as equal parent to the child, and even forced the Doctor to break his medical ethical subroutines by reprogramming him. She was wrong. And, perhaps he was wrong for wanting to punish her, but the better part of him wanted their child to be born, to be able to have a better life than expiring in a damned frosty fetal coffin.  


“Well, Commander, I do find your case compelling and, I do have to agree that, though this is a particularly delicate matter, the law is on your side, however, if I agree to hold a hearing to decide the fate of the Janeway fetus, I will not tolerate this becoming a media circus. Is that completely clear?” Admiral Porter questioned, her dark gaze on the level with Janeway’s frosty death glare.  


Chakotay considered the slight woman before him. She was half a meter shorter than his own stature. Her eyes were nearly a coal black, while her porcelain face bespoke just how formidable she truly was. With hair the color of Janeway’s coffee swept up into an intricate twist off of her shoulders and her jawbone set rigid, her entire stance let him know that she might be slight but she certainly meant business when she spoke. She might have been attractive if she hadn’t been so plain. She certainly wasn’t the beauty Janeway and Seven were, but she wasn’t unfortunate to look at either.  


“I give you my word that I will do everything possible to keep this from becoming a media circus, as you put it. I just want what is in the best interest of the child involved here.”  


She eyed him, seeking a motive other than that of a concerned future father. When she could find nothing, she tucked the PADD beneath her elbow and offered him her hand, which he promptly shook. “I will draft a summons for Captain Janeway to appear before a child welfare board. We will begin by seeking possession and custody of the fetus after which point a decision can be made as to how to go about continuing the gestation of the fetus. You will be hearing from me before the week is out.”  


“Thank you, Admiral.” Chakotay felt relieved as he left her office. It was as though a huge weight were lifted off of his chest. At least now he stood a chance getting custody of his child and seeing it born. Part of his heart ached at the thought of putting the final nail in the coffin of his and Kathryn’s relationship, but there wasn’t much that could be done about that at this point. She had chosen her path and now it was time for him to make his.  


When he arrived home, he found Seven in the yard, attempting to dig the garden they had talked about planting. He watched her for a few moments, smiling at her attempts to wield the hoe correctly before she noticed he had returned.  


“This equipment is ancient. Gardening is irrelevant. We own a replicator,” she stated, giving him a serious gaze lacking any and all amusement. She dropped the hoe and attempted to untangle her ankle from the hose.  


“Gardening is not irrelevant. There is something to be said for growing food with your bare hands that you put on your plate for mealtime. It is very satisfying and the fruits and vegetables taste better after a little bit of labor,” he explained. He had always found a great deal of satisfaction in working the land and couldn’t help but recall days long ago from his youth, plowing fields on Trebus.  


“Taste is irrelevant. Food is consumed for its nutritional value and does not require good taste to provide the required vitamins and minerals,” she replied, very matter-of-factly.  


Gardening and food were obviously not a good topic for discussion so he decided to change it. “I saw the admiral who deals with the child welfare regulations today,” he told her. He had told her about the fetus that Kathryn was keeping in stasis and how it had come to be there and also about how Kathryn had just informed him of it. He told her that he wanted to gain custody of the fetus so that it might be born. She, in her cold and stoic manner, had informed him that she would fulfill the duty as a maturation chamber for the child so that he might be a father. He had gently explained that not only would he be a father to the child, but that she would be surrogate mother and, if nothing else, step-mother to the child. This she acknowledged with a curt nod and went about her study of botany for their upcoming gardening project.  


“What did you learn?” she asked, leading the way into their humble home, out of the heat of the Arizona sun.  


“Admiral Porter is going to draft a summons for her to appear before the child welfare board. They will decide the fate of the fetus from that point on.” He called up two glasses of iced tea and gestured for her to join him on the couch.  


“The Captain will not be pleased if I am to perform the duties as maturation chamber to this fetus,” she decide as she sat, ramrod straight, next to him.  


Chakotay took a long swallow from his tea. While he loved his beautiful, young companion, he couldn’t get over how stiff and mechanical she still was. He had expected that, once they were on Earth, she would begin to embrace her humanity more and learn how to relax and enjoy life the way he did, but he was beginning to wonder if it was ever possible for her to break free of the influence the Borg had over her for majority of her life. She had yet to learn how to laugh without being cued to. Even Tuvok seemed more human that she did, and that was a great stretch for someone who had been born Vulcan.  


“If the board decides in our favor, Seven, then it really won’t matter if she is pleased or not.”  


“So you wish to terminate your friendship with the Captain?”  


“Our friendship was terminated when she told me she had lied to me all of these years.”  


Seven was gratified to hear this. She was fond of Chakotay, perhaps even felt the emotion of love for him, though she had no basis for comparison to know what love felt like. She liked sharing his dwelling with him and was comfortable around him. Remnants of the frightened child she had once been no longer seemed to disturb her when she was with him. There was a great deal about him she did not understand: his adherence to ancient customs, his desire to grow food in the ground when they had a perfectly good replicator, his need to litter their home with unnecessary trinkets. She felt physical enjoyment from their evening copulations, though still did not quite grasp the fluidity of his movements as he touched her. All of this, she liked. What she did not like was the idea of him still loving Kathryn Janeway. His feelings for Kathryn were a threat to the life she liked and was learning to fit into. When he had informed her of the existence of the fetus, she had been certain he had been trying to terminate their relationship, but he had assured her that wasn’t so. She had believed him because he had never lied to her before. She had no reason not to. Now, knowing that he wanted her to birth the child for him made her feel all the more secure in the endearments he whispered to her as he held her in his arms. She liked that. Kathryn Janeway was irrelevant. Any attempt she tried to make to ruin the relationship she and Chakotay shared would be futile.

 

Four months. If anyone gave her a medical scan right now, they would see her as a normal, four month pregnant woman. No one would ever guess that she had, for lack of better words, paused, her pregnancy for several years.  


It had also been exactly one month since they had returned home on Voyager and she had done her best to stay out of the public eye, spending her days happily ensconced in the Indiana home of her childhood, getting her check-ups from her mother’s doctor. He was an older man and certainly not the type to talk to the press if someone had seen her coming and going from his office. The way her mother had spoke of him, she had sounded a little fonder of Patrick Shanahan than just a respectful patient towards her doctor.  


In fact, she had just come home from her four-month check-up with him. She didn’t share the details of her pregnancy, but had told him that at this time, monthly visits to San Francisco to her previous doctor were just out of the question and Doctor Shanahan had understood completely and had been very happy to take on the task of overseeing her pregnancy.  


“How did you like Doctor Shanahan?” Gretchen asked, joining her on the porch swing with mugs of hot tea.  


“I liked him just fine. I am sure he will do a fine job delivering my daughter,” Kathryn replied before sipping the peppermint tea.  


“Yes. He is a good man,” Gretchen mused, unable to keep a smile from pulling at the corners of her mouth. She liked the gentle man with lively green eyes and a head full of sleek gray hair. He was a just about half a meter taller than she and made it a point to keep himself physically fit. He ran two kilometers every day and was not a big fan of replicated meals, preferring to cook from his own garden and to buy his meats from an old fashioned butcher who raised his own livestock.  


“He asked about you, Mom,” Kathryn told her casually. In fact, the man had done a little more than just asked and Kathryn had taken up the opportunity to expound on her mother’s most gracious qualities.  


“Did he, now? That was very nice of him,” she replied, simply.  


Kathryn felt like she was ready to burst. She knew her mother was holding back, trying not to appear too anxious, trying to remain poised. “You know, Daddy has been gone a long time, Mom. Pheebs and I are both grown women and… well you shouldn’t be alone so much.”  


“Oh, Katie, you don’t need to worry about me. Besides, I won’t be alone with you around and especially so with my new granddaughter coming in a few months. Which reminds me, your sister has made a strict order that you are not to go into the spare bedroom across the hall from yours under any circumstances. She said she is working on a surprise for you, in lieu of a shower gift.”  


“That is really nice of her, but back to the subject at hand. I invited Doctor Shanahan over for dinner this evening,” Kathryn said. Even if all she managed to do was make a mess out of her own personal life, she could at least try to help her mother. It wasn’t that Gretchen was unhappy, but there were times when Kathryn noticed she seemed distant and a bit lonely at times.  


“Katie!” Gretchen felt a blush rising into her cheeks. Sure, she was very fond of Patrick, but she hardly expected her eldest daughter to pick up on that little fact let alone take the step to invite him to dinner at their home.  


“I am sure he will appreciate the company. We got onto to talking about him for a while. Did you know he has been a widower for nearly fifteen years? His wife died in a transport ship accident. He has two sons who are both in Starfleet and near Phoebe and my ages. His eldest is Larkin and his youngest is Roark. They are both married and have children. Larkin and his family are currently serving on Deep Space Four and Roark and his family are on the Galileo near the Romulan border. They both attended the Academy at Dublin.” Kathryn told her, knowing she was hanging on every word, soaking it in.  


“I assume you’re not planning on cooking then?” Gretchen asked, raising an eyebrow at her daughter.  


“Well, I didn’t invite him and plan on having you do all the work.”  


“Katie, he may be a doctor, but we really don’t need to give him a reason to have to treat himself for food poisoning,” she poked fun at Kathryn’s cooking ineptitude.  


“Mom! I’ll have you know I learned a great deal about preparing a meal while…” she paused, memories from New Earth popping into her head, “well, while we were in the Delta Quadrant.”  


Gretchen didn’t miss her daughter's pause, but didn’t press. She knew her daughter would open up and talk to her when she was ready. “I’ll prepare the meal if you will find us an appropriate bottle of wine to accompany it.”  


A smile spread across Kathryn’s face as she pushed back the memories from New Earth that plagued her dreams. “It’s a deal!”

 

Meeting Kathryn Janeway wasn’t anything like he had expected; _she_ wasn’t anything like he had expected. Sure, Gretchen had spoke of her with the love of a mother missing her daughter, but somehow he had seen her as stoic, hard and completely without humor or life. She was none of what he had anticipated at all. She had been warm, full of smiles and had made him laugh. Maybe he had just expected her to be like his eldest son. Larkin was so serious about his career, his family and his whole life and Patrick had always assumed that Starfleet had taken the laughter from him. Yes, he was warm and approachable to his wife and children, but not to outsiders and not to his crew. Roark was a little more like Kathryn and a little more like the devious son of Admiral Paris that she had spoken of briefly. Perhaps that’s why Larkin was a Captain and Roark was still a Lieutenant.  


It was a like a dream come true when Kathryn had invited him to have dinner with her mother and herself. He had always been fond of Gretchen, but just hadn’t known how to approach her. She was, after all, his patient, and he certainly didn’t want to do anything that would seem out of line. A doctor asking a patient out on a dinner date was just something that wasn’t typically considered appropriate.  


Now, he found himself standing before a modest, very traditional looking home, just as his own. He could almost picture Gretchen sitting on the antiquated porch swing with a grandchild or two at her side. He knew her youngest daughter, Phoebe, had blessed her with five grandchildren ranging in age from ten to two years, but that they also lived in New Orleans and didn’t visit as often as Gretchen would have liked.  


It was Kathryn who greeted him after he rang the bell to their home. She was as delightful a young woman as she had been upon his first meeting her when she graciously shook his hand and gestured for him to step into their home. It was hard for him to imagine her as the stern-looking captain of Voyager he had seen on the news clip when they had been disembarking.  


“So, how are my newest patients doing this evening?” he asked as he followed her into the dining room where sinfully delicious aromas wafted out from the kitchen. He could see through breakfast bar into the kitchen where Gretchen was busily cooking.  


Kathryn smiled as she used a cloth to dust off the bottle of Chateau Picard Merlot 2362 before uncorking it and allowing it to breathe for a moment. “We are doing just splendid, thank you, Doctor.”  


“Please, just Patrick this evening. We’ll leave the formalities for the office, yes?”  


“That sounds like a plan to me. I hope you like grilled lamb with mint sauce. The merlot compliments it so well and it is one of mother’s favorite dishes to prepare.”  


“Not only my favorite but my specialty,” Gretchen commented, poking her head out from in the kitchen. “Hello, Patrick,” she smiled almost shyly.  


“It smells wonderful! Is there anything I can do to help you?”  


“Not at all, you just sit down and relax.”  


“I do have one question. How is it, Kathryn, that you invite me for dinner yet your mother ends up doing all of the cooking?”  


“You want to live through the meal, right Patrick?”  


Patrick’s eyes twinkled curiously as he looked between the mother-daughter pair when Kathryn’s head snapped in the direction of her mother. “Of course…”  


“Then be happy I am the one doing the cooking,” Gretchen commented with a knowing look towards her daughter.  


“She doesn’t believe that seven years of roughing it in the Delta Quadrant taught me a thing or two,” Kathryn replied as she sliced the bread and poured the dipping oil on the little platter next to the bread tray.  


“I do hope you will share some of the tales of your adventures over dinner,” Patrick said, taking a seat at the table as Gretchen appeared from the kitchen carrying the tray of lamb and mint sauce.  


“I hope everyone is hungry!” She placed the platter on the table and returned to the kitchen only to reappear with bowls of buttered asparagus and roasted baby potatoes.  


Together, the three of them sat down at the table. Kathryn entertained them with stories of Neelix and Kes and some of the strange customs they had come across while visiting species of the Delta Quadrant. She stayed on topics that avoided mention of Chakotay and anything that would bring up potentially painful memories of him. After a while, she quieted and listened as Patrick told them of growing up in a traditional Irish village in Ireland. All through the evening, she could tell that her mother was falling a little more for the handsome doctor and Kathryn was entirely pleased. During dessert, coffee ice cream and the infamous caramel brownies, Gretchen shared stories of Kathryn and Phoebe growing up and of her grandchildren, Cadence, Sage, Trinity, Larkin and Valentia.  


When Gretchen suggested retiring to the porch swing to enjoy the coming evening, Kathryn took the hint and politely begged off, insisting that she was a bit tired and had some messages to catch up on before bed, leaving them to have a little bit of privacy.  


“Are you sure, dear? I am going to put a pot of tea on.”  


“Yes, Mom, I’m sure. It has been a very pleasant evening. Thank you for joining us, Patrick.”  


“It has been my pleasure, and thank you for your gracious invitation, Kathryn,” Patrick replied, genuinely grateful that she had been so thoughtful in her invitation. It wasn’t often that he had company to share a meal with and he had thoroughly enjoyed himself.  


Kathryn nodded with a smile before retreating up the stairs to the bedroom that had been hers since she had been a small child. As she flopped down on her bed, she heard her mother and Patrick step out onto the porch through her open bedroom window. She could hear the murmurs of their low conversation, but not enough to consider herself an eavesdropper, so she didn’t bother to close the window. The fragrant breeze that caused her curtains to billow was warm and relaxing and she felt herself unwind. She needed this. She needed nights where she could just melt into her bed and forget everything that had happened in the Delta Quadrant. Even forget the disaster she had left her relationship with Chakotay. But, she found herself thinking of him more and more. 

His face pushed its way into her mind at random even though she tried to shake it away. Yes, she was carrying his child, but it didn’t matter. He was not part of her world, not part of her life. This was her baby she was going to have.  


As she was recalling the image from her mind’s eye what her daughter was going to look like, she was interrupted by a beep from her console. She rolled out of her bed with a sigh. Even on leave, it seemed they couldn’t leave her alone. Starfleet never slept, she was certain of that. She slid into her desk chair and clicked to open the message and almost immediately wished she hadn’t when the image of Admiral Elizabeth Porter appeared on her screen.  


“Admiral, this is a surprise. What can I do for you?” Kathryn asked, keeping her expressions cool and steady. If she remembered correctly, Admiral Porter was in charge of the child welfare board of Starfleet. They were responsible for all cases in regards to children of Starfleet officers and what was in their best interest.  


“I wish I could say I am contacting you with better news, but unfortunately, Captain, I am serving you a summons to appear before the child welfare board in regards to a complaint from Commander Chakotay.”  


“I see. May I ask what this is concerning?” Kathryn couldn’t help the frigid glare she had fixed her screen with. She was furious and it was the only thing that was keeping her anger encapsulated within.  


“He has made a complaint in regards to a fetus which he has a biological claim to. He has alleged that you had said fetus removed from your body in violation of the Equal Paternity Rights Act. And due to your unknown intentions with this fetus that is in stasis, he has petitioned for sole custodial rights. We convene to determine the fate of the fetus tomorrow morning at oh-nine-hundred.”  


Kathryn nodded stiffly before the screen went dark. How could he?! What was he thinking, trying to take the baby away from her? And, what would it mean for their daughter if he decided he wanted to take custody away from her? She couldn’t stop herself from punching in his number sending a comm.  


“May I help you, Captain?”  


For some reason, she hadn’t anticipated Seven to answer the comm. and she certainly hadn’t expected her to be so icy towards her. Why should she be? She had won. She had Chakotay, they were going to be married and they were going to try to take her child away to bring up as their own. What more did she want? She had everything Kathryn had ever wanted.  


“I need to speak to Chakotay, please.”  


Seven fixed her with a frosty gaze. “He does not have any interest in speaking with you, Captain.”  


“I don’t give a damn about his interests. I need to speak to him. Now!” She was not about to play games of stubbornness with her. The woman may have spent most of her life as a cold, mechanical Borg, but Kathryn was certain she could be far more stubborn and demanding than she could. After all, she had defeated the Borg AND kept her humanity intact.  


Seven’s eyes narrowed, but nonetheless, she relented and left the screen to, presumably, fetch Chakotay. 

The last thing he had expected was a comm. call from Kathryn, but he should have known better. He should have assumed that once Admiral Porter contacted her, she would be immediately contacting him for an answer and explanation. What boggled him was that she just expected him to forget about this child they had created and she had shelved for so many years. Did she seriously think she could tell him about it, come clean and then just expect him to walk away?  


When he sat down at the monitor, he hadn’t expected her to look so damned good. Her hair seemed to shimmer in the low illumination and her skin was warm and glowing. She looked positively radiant and, as much as he wanted to hate her, he couldn’t deny that fact.  


“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, dragging me in front of the child welfare board?” she demanded.  


He had expected as much, hadn’t even bothered to figure that this could be a social call from her. They had parted on less than amicable terms. “I am doing what I feel is in the best interest of my child.”  


“And why would you believe I wouldn’t do what is in the best interest of _my_ child?”  


“Because you _didn’t_ do what was in the best interest of _my_ child in the first place, _Captain._ Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was in the process of making dinner for my fiancée and I. The advocacy board will sort this out tomorrow.”  


As he closed the comm. he couldn’t shake the feelings brewing within. He was still attracted to her. The vibrant blue glow of her eyes, the porcelain skin that had been so soft to his touch. The fetus entombed in that stasis chamber had been made of a love he had never thought would die and, apparently hadn’t. His heart had quickened at the sight of her on his screen and he had felt a rush of heat through his body that ended in his loins. He felt the twitch, then the uncomfortable stirring that seemed to grow until his desire for her was straining against the cloth of his pants. Why couldn’t he hate her? When she was out of sight, he could be furious with her, but no matter how angry she made him, it all came right back to the fact that when she was before him, it melted away like ice in the Sahara.  


It was in that moment, he heard Seven storm down the hall. _Shit._ She had been standing in the doorway all along, must have seen the twitching at his groin. _Shit._ Now she was going to be pissed at him, too. He just couldn’t seem to get anything right when it came to women. Seska had had mistake written all over her from the beginning, but he had been too damned angry and lonely to care. Kathryn had required patience and understanding he had not been able to afford her and Seven… well she was a struggle no matter which way he tried to appease her. He was beginning to wonder if he ought to take a sabbatical from women all together. Maybe he would take his daughter, once he managed to find a way to have her birthed, and go on a long archeological assignment as remote as he possibly could. As appealing as it sounded, it presented many logistical problems. The primary being, how could he care for an infant while he was up to his knees in dirt all day? It wasn’t a very ideal plan in regards to his future status as a new father. If only things had worked out with Kathryn. Then, none of these issues would have even been a remote problem for him. But, for now, he had to go try to make peace with the equivalent of a hive of disturbed hornets: nearly impossible and ultimately painful.

Kathryn had tossed and turned all night. She remembered dozing off after hearing her mother and Patrick on the stairs beyond her bedroom, trying to be quiet as they snuck up to her bedroom. She hadn’t been able to help the smile that played across her lips. She had done a good thing. She knew she had. Even as she drifted into her restless slumber, she had been happy with herself and happy for her mother, but she had not stayed that way.  


Her nightmares had been shards of the past melded with her current worries. In one of the nightmares, she had been roaming Voyager's corridors, calling for Ayasha Erin while they were in the midst of battle. Chakotay had appeared, clad in his civvies from his Maquis days, running away from her, carrying the vision of the little girl she had come to know as their daughter. She chased him, but it was like her body was being pulled back and she had to fight an unseen force. She cried out for him to stop, to let Ayasha go, but he just kept running until he disappeared and she was left alone, the corridor being destroyed all around her.  


Just as she was about to feel the nanosecond of pain before her death, she would shoot up out of bed, gasping for air with her hair matted to her face in a cold sweat. For a moment, she would be lost, until her eyes focused and she realized that, for the umpteenth time, it was just a dream and would flop back onto her pillows only to repeat the cycle.  


When morning finally came, she felt as though she had battled Klingon warriors all night rather than just her agitated subconscious. A hot shower did little for her nerves, but it did make her feel refreshed and awake and, when she pulled on the new uniform with the gray shoulders, she felt it clinch a little more than normal at the waist. She checked the mirror and was relieved to see it wasn’t evident to the casual observer.  


Carefully, she made her way down the stairs, trying to make sure she didn’t wake her mother. She didn’t know if Patrick had, for sure, stayed over, and if he had, and she didn’t want to disturb them if they were still asleep. But, her musing was answered when she rounded the corner to the kitchen and found her mother and Patrick sitting at the table, talking low over a cup of coffee.  


“Kathryn!” Gretchen gasped, “I am so sorry we woke you.”  


“You didn’t. I have to report to Head Quarters this morning. They sent me a comm. last night.” She had anticipated it being awkward, finding her mother and Patrick together the _morning after_ , but she didn’t. She was actually glad for her.  


“Do you have time for breakfast? I can whip us up something,” Gretchen offered, already headed for the replicator.  


“No, I really need to be going so I am not late,” she replied, reaching for a cup of coffee, hoping it would infuse her veins with the necessary caffeine and make her feel sharp and revitalized.  


“It’s not good for you or the baby to be skipping meals, Kathryn,” Patrick chastised.  


She paused, comically under certain if she was going to like the arrangement of her doctor dating her mother. She checked the chronometer and sighed. She had time, though just barely. “Fine, you win,” she decided, sliding into a seat at the table, suddenly realizing that Patrick was wearing her mother’s ruffled, blue satin bath robe. She smothered a smile and felt her belly growl voraciously when her eyes met the spread of food her mother returned carrying from the replicator: Eggs Benedict, stewed tomatoes, strawberries and cream, hash browns, sausage links, bacon, and a pitcher of orange juice. Her favorite breakfast and then some!  


Kathryn didn’t hear much of the conversation between her mother and Patrick but rather focused on consuming enough of her breakfast to satisfy them. As good as it was, she was too nerved up to eat much and she was hoping they didn’t notice.  


“That was wonderful, mother, but I really have to be going. Thank you.” Without another word, she was out the door and on her way. Her stomach was doing flip-flops, even though she had passed the morning sickness stage of her pregnancy. Upon arriving at HQ, she felt her stomach tighten and her heartbeat quicken. She hadn’t been this nervous on her first day at the Academy. She always prided herself on having nerves of steel, though not today. And it wasn’t like they could take the fetus from her, seeing as how she was in her womb, she was concerned with the aftermath. What would they do once she gave birth? Would they really take Ayasha Erin away from her? She was afraid that they could. After all, Chakotay could offer her a two parent household, even if one of those parents was a former drone. It certainly looked in his favor to provide more stability than the single parent household of a ship captain. 

Arriving in the advocate’s room at HQ made his stomach churn. He couldn’t believe it had come to this. He had never, ever figured he would find himself battling over the life of his child with Kathryn. Even imagining something like this was ludicrous, yet here they were. He sat down at one of the tables, facing the bench where the advocate would sit and hear each of their sides of the story after which she would decide the fate of the, as she put it, Janeway fetus.  


When Kathryn entered and sat opposite of him, he felt a tinge of regret at the fact that she didn’t greet him warmly as she would have done in the past. She didn’t even look at him, her blue eyes the epitome cold anger as she took her own seat. He couldn’t stop his eyes from looking her up and down, noticing the uniform she wore fit a little snugger across hips. She had been eating well, her mother probably filling her with something other than caramel brownies and coffee. It was good for her, not that she had ever looked terrible, but she never ate right when they were in the Delta Quadrant.  


When Admiral Elizabeth Porter entered the room, they stood, respectfully until she gestured for them to relax and return to their seats. She was flanked by a Vulcan assistant who carried a P.A.D.D. in her hands and wore the red collared uniform of an ensign.  


“We are here to discuss and deliberate the future of a human fetus which, for the purposes of these proceedings will be referred to as the Janeway fetus. The Janeway fetus, as I have come to understand it is a human fetus of approximately three months gestation which was unlawfully removed from the mother, Captain Kathryn Janeway through methods that this advocate feels to be grossly negligent of the laws and conduct unbecoming an officer. Captain Janeway, would you like to tell your side of the story?”  


Her jaw was set, her eyes were shooting ice daggers at Porter. Chakotay knew that look. He had interpreted it only two ways. The first had been in their early days together and typically it was the look that was set on Paris when he did or said something totally stupid. It was her ‘I will give you a cloth and bucket and _make_ you scrub the hull of this ship, Paris’ look. Otherwise, it was known lovingly aboard the ship as the infamous Janeway death glare, which she had fixed Cullah with numerous times, as well as several other alien species that had pissed her off.  


“Admiral Porter,” she began carefully, “I see you have already judged me based solely on one part of the story. That is fine. I do not wish to share my part of the story or that part of my personal life. What I do wish to tell you is that I have resumed the pregnancy of the _Janeway fetus_. Now, if we are through, I would like to resume the remainder of my shore leave, if you don’t mind.”  


Chakotay had to summon all the strength in his body to keep his jaw from hitting the floor. He had assumed she had filled out a bit from her mother’s home cooking, he never assumed she had resumed the pregnancy. How? When? Had she even planned to tell him? He had wanted to be furious with her, but all he could do was gaze at her in awe. She was going to give birth to his child… She was… oh Spirits, he had really stuck his foot in it this time.  


“No, Captain, I don’t believe we are through,” Porter replied, the depths of the tone of her voice could have rattled the very walls of the hearing room. “When was this pregnancy resumed?”  


“The night before my crew and I disembarked from Voyager,” she replied quickly.  


“I see. And when were you planning to inform Commander Chakotay?”  


“That was something I had not decided at this time.”  


She hadn’t planned to tell him at all. He knew it. He could feel it. She had planned to just let him think their daughter was going to expire in the stasis chamber. She had never intended for him to find out she had resumed the pregnancy and was going to give birth to his daughter. His fury grew again. Was she out of her mind?  


“Admiral, if you don’t mind, I would like the topic of custody of the child to be broached here and now. Based on the actions of Captain Janeway throughout this matter, I cannot honestly say I believe she has the best intentions of the child at heart. I would like to ask that I be granted full custody of our daughter upon her birth,” Chakotay stated, cringing a little inside as he saw her turn her head towards him, a look of shock gathering there. What else was he to do? She had planned to give his daughter life and never tell him!  


“I see. Your request and argument does have merit, Commander, however, this is not a decision I am willing to make at this time. It will take time and deliberation. I will contact you both when I have a decision, until then, we are in recess.” Admiral Porter and her assistant, who had been making records, left the hearing room and Kathryn and Chakotay alone together. 

 

“Kathryn…” he began, standing and facing her. He didn’t know what he was going to say to her. “I…”  


She was on her feet, her eyes freezing the very words that tried to expel from his throat. How she loathed him, hated him in this moment, this man she had loved, had given her heart too on that beautiful distant planet where their little shelter and the evidence of the home they had once shared stood in ruins, the man she had vowed to give everything to once they arrived home. Had she really been that poor of a judge of character? Had she really loved someone who didn’t exist? Or had Seven robbed him of his masculinity to the point that he was only a ghost of the man she had once loved? No matter what the reason, she had one thing and one thing alone to say to him.  


“Chakotay, let me make myself perfectly clear when I say this. You. Will. Never. Take. My. Child. From. Me.” And with those words having crossed her lips, she drove them home with a stare that had shriveled men across two quadrants before turning on her heel and leaving him standing there, staring after her.  


_Her_ child. “She is my child, too, Kathryn!” he called after her before chasing to catch up with her hurried pace. “How can you do this? How can you just act like I don’t exist! Without me, there would not be a child!”  


She whirled on him. “And how can you try to take her away from me? What are you going to tell her? That _Seven_ is her mother? I can’t believe you dragged me in front of the child advocate like this!”  


“What would you have had me do? You didn’t bother to tell me you had resumed the pregnancy? Was I supposed to just sit back and let this child expire in that damned stasis chamber where you forgot about her for all those years? I loved you, Kathryn! We created something beautiful, but like all things I have ever given you, you tried to hide it like it was something shameful. You might be able to lock yourself up in a jar, but I will be damned if you ever do anything like that to my daughter again!” Chakotay stormed off, his anger was ready to explode. He hadn’t felt this angry since he had been killing Cardassians in the Maquis. His face was burning, his eyes felt like they were scorched. He hated her. He hated her for the things she had done, for throwing away everything they could have had. He hated her because deep down, he knew he would always love her. He needed a drink. Badly.  


Kathryn didn’t bother to watch him leave. She knew what she had to do. It wasn’t what she wanted, it wasn’t how she had planned things, but she knew that, in time, her mother and sister would understand and forgive her. 

Chakotay felt his feet sway beneath him. He hadn’t remembered getting into a boat, but he was rocking like the waves of the ocean had rocked the sailboat his father had taken him on when he had been just a boy. Powered by the hands of the Spirits and not some piece of technology; it the only way to navigate an ocean, according to Kolopak. To Chakotay, it had made his face green and his lunch come up over the railing.  


After feeling the ground bite into his knees as he stumbled, he knew he wasn’t sailing after all. It was the liquor in his stomach that was sloshing all over and diluting his blood, making his head swim. Tears of the Spirits of evil. That was what Kolopak had called clear liquor. They made a man slur like a fool and wobble on his feet like a newborn calf and there was nothing good to be found in the bottom of the bottle. Chakotay didn’t care. He was glad he was drunk.  


He managed to make his way up the drive to his house and unlock the door. He hated this house. He hated the way she had decorated it, hated how everything seemed so cold and uninviting, how all of the things he had wanted to hang and display had been reduced to being shoved into his little office.  


He shucked his clothes as he made his way towards their bedroom, leaving a trail from the door as he went. She would pick them up and not say a word about it. She was good like that. And he didn’t care that she would do it with a quiet annoyance. She never said anything, but he could see it in her face when he wasn’t as perfect as she was. That made him furious too. She never complained, she would just look at him with those flawless blue eyes and make him feel like half a man.  
Sliding beneath the cool sheets, he encountered her body, warm to the touch. She was always warmer than he was and, tonight, she felt so good. His hands slid around her waist and up over her ample breasts, finding the nipples responsive to his touch. He felt his flaccid cock twitch, struggling to wake up through the stream of alcohol coursing through his veins. He was not a young man any more, but he never failed to call his body to attention, even if it did take a few moments longer through the affects of the alcohol.  


“You do not have a satisfactory odor to your breath,” she said, sounding completely wide awake.  


He didn’t care what she thought about his breath. He knew he smelled like a distillery and that was the least of his concerns. His only concern was the fact that his cock was starting to harden and her hand was not stroking it. He grabbed her hand, perhaps with a little more force than necessary and placed it at his groin.  


“I do not wish to copulate at this time.”  


“Well, I do,” he growled, closing her hand around his cock and forcing her to stroke it as he nibbled at the back of her neck.  


“Am I expected to give into your request simply because you are intoxicated? I do not remember taking such a course with the Doctor,” she said, very irritated.  


“Just… shut-up,” he snapped, pulling her legs apart, not caring if he left a bruise or two on her thighs. He used a finger to probe her wetness. Perfect. As always. She always had to be so damned perfect. He hated it. He added a second finger, roughly thrusting them in and out of her, feeling her wetness spread onto his hand. She was ready, she was more than ready. He pulled back and aligned himself with her, thrusting deep as he held her hips. She may as well have been just an object, for all the passion she put into loving him back, so he closed his eyes and pictured the woman who he would rather have been loving. She moved with him, touched him, cried out beneath him.  


He rolled her onto her back, pressed her knees to her breasts and pounded deep, feeling her warmth suck him in, loving the way her body was needing him, wanting him. She was like a glove, gripping his cock so tightly it was nearly painful, but the most delightful pleasure he had ever known. Her hair, cascading over his pillows and those dazzling blue eyes, pleading for more with just a look; he felt his loins tighten, the heat traveling upwards from deep within his balls.  


“Oh sweet Spirits, Kathryn!” he exploded, pumping into her hard, viciously, wanting to be so deep within her he lost himself, forgot himself and became one with just her.  


When the pumping in his balls stopped, his cock twitching from the sweet intensity, he managed to roll off of her, the world spinning about, his stomach rocking and rolling opposite of the spin in his head. Sleep. That was what he needed. Sleep. Sleep.

The tears had been quick to gather and silent to release. She rolled on her side, feeling very unclean as the tears moistened her pillow. She had loved this man. She had tried to be a good partner. How had she failed?  


He had just proven her failure to her. He had called out the Captain’s name when he had ejaculated. During a moment of intimacy, despite being a moment forced upon her, he had not seen her beneath him, had not heard her muffled cries. He had been imagining someone different. He had been imagining a woman who had betrayed him. How could he love someone like that?  


Human emotions were a mess. She did not feel any desire to continue with their relationship, and when she heard him fall into a slumber, she arose from the bed where he had just soiled her and their coverlet.  


Seven wiped the tears that stained her cheeks and quickly packed the few belongings she had before a quick sonic shower then dressing. She sat down at her terminal and recorded what the Doctor had called a ‘Dear John’ letter. She had never learned who John was, but she supposed that did not matter. What mattered was, she left the message blinking on the terminal then sent a quick letter of acceptance to the Vulcan Science Institute of the position they had offered her as chief researcher and booked passage on the transport ship that was leaving from San Francisco within the hour. Without a look back, she left their little abode in the Arizona desert.


	4. Three Years Later – Cerrion – On the edge of the Beta Quadrant

“The snow flowers have opened on the mountain side, come and see!” Bayleigha announced excitedly as she poked through the door in her hooded parka.  


She smiled, tucking her long, coffee colored locks under her hood then slipping into her boots to follow. This was an event she never missed for it was so alien to her and so incredibly beautiful. She trudged through the snow, noticing that over night they had gotten another foot. It was not uncommon on this continent of Cerrion V to get a foot of snow a night during the winter season. It was a good thing all of their homes and paths were equipped with warming devices to melt enough that they could still come and go as they pleased.  


Chasing after Bayleigha was not an easy task. The fifteen year old Cerrion had long legs and a thin form that was designed for easy movement in the snow. The bones of a Cerrion were hollow and, if they had wings, she theorized that they could probably fly. She wondered if that was an evolutionary trait they might have had then lost at some point. Bayleigha easily climbed the hill that blocked their little settlements view of the mountain and stopped.  


Bayleigha was one of the teenagers who helped the settlements mothers with their children. Someday, she would make a fine mother and wife all her own, but Cerrion custom was that she could not marry until she was in her twentieth year. For now, she was a beautiful young girl who loved nothing more than building snow tunnels with the children.  


The Cerrions were a lovely looking race and not that dissimilar to humans. Their arms and legs were much longer and thinner their torsos were short and compact. Their hair color ranged from a soft caramel to a dark mocha and their skin was pale, almost like a human albino. Their eyes were most unusual though. They were large and almond shape with opalescent pupils that glimmered soft lavender to powder blue.  


“Come on, Nicole, don’t tell me those short human legs of yours are holding you up!”  


“I wasn’t designed for this type of weather!” she replied back, huffing and puffing her way up the hill until she reached the top and froze. It was more beautiful this year than it ever had been before. “Dazzling!” she whispered. She gazed at the mountain that was covered in a sea of red. It looked like someone had carefully dropped a ton of poinsettias on the mountain, covering all of the snow from view. These were plants more rare than any she had ever known. The flower blossomed in the deepest, coldest part of winter for one day then snapped back closed and retreated underneath the snows where each one would grow a lilac purple fruit that was very rich in amino acids and vitamin c. They called the fruit ra’nan’opa and it made the most delicious juice. It reminded her of a kiwi-orange-pear mix.  


“Mama!”  


She spun around and found her pride and joy bounding through the snow. If one didn’t know any better, they would have thought she was a Cerrion with how easy she navigated the powder. “Hello, my darling! Where have you been?”  


“Playing with Ah’Latica and Delsie.”  


On the other side of the hill, she could see Ah’Latica and her daughter Delsie. Ah’Latica was a single mother, too, and her little girl, Delsie, was only six months older than her own daughter. Ah’Latica had quickly become her closest friend and had helped her become accustomed to Cerrion and also helped her find a place to live when she had first arrived. Ah’Latica had just gotten word that her husband had been killed in a mining operation in the Cerrion system’s asteroid belt and that had sent her into labor early. Delsie was only four months old when she had arrived, pregnant and scared. Ah’Latica had been there for her, had helped her and they took turns watching over each other’s children.  


“Nicole, isn’t it beautiful?”  


She was never going to fully get used to that. It always took her a moment to respond when someone called her Nicole because she had to forever remind herself that her name was Nicole Jenkins now. Nicole Jenkins with her coffee colored hair, emerald green eyes, and dark features. No one bothered to ask why her daughter’s hair was nearly jet black, her skin the color of bronze and her eyes as blue as the cordidite jem in the marital crest the Cerrion women wore on their foreheads.  


“It is lovely this year. I think there are more flowers this year than last,” she replied, smiling at the view. “Aren’t the flowers lovely, Ayasha?”  


“So pretty!” she replied, her sharp blue eyes taking in the scene before her.  


“Well, how about we head inside and get some hot chocolate and caramel brownies?”  


“Must be a human affinity to want to raise your blood sugar with unhealthy caloric intakes,” Ah’Latica shook her head with a smile as Ayasha and Delsie grew excited over the notion of their favorite treat.  


She laughed, a deep and throaty. “Sometimes, the unhealthy things are not all bad. Besides, I enjoy spoiling the girls a little now and again.”  


“If you say so. I think I’ll stick to a nice hot nal’nak tea,” she replied, still shaking her head, her caramel colored hair tossing with the light breeze that carried the exotic scent of the ra’nan’opa flowers. 

When their friends had gone home for the night, she curled up on her bed with Ayasha snuggled into her. She thought about the beauty of the ra’nan’opa blossoming and couldn’t help but think of the first blossom of the wild flowers back on her home planet, a planet she had never told Ayasha about. She thought of all of the people Ayasha had never met and couldn’t help but feel sad. She hadn’t talked to her mother or sister in three years and none of them had ever even seen a picture of Ayasha. It was far too dangerous. She loved her precious little girl so much that she had walked away from her life, her family, the planet she had vowed to spend a lifetime getting back to all to make sure that he didn’t take Ayasha away from her.  


Cerrion was no Earth, but she felt that, regardless of her lament over what had been lost, she had made the right decision for her daughter’s sake, for her own sake. Let him marry, let them adopt, let them have a happy life together just so long as he didn’t mess with hers. She prayed he never found them.  


“Mama, story please?”  


She knew which story Ayasha wanted to hear. It was the one she had been telling her every night. It was the one where all of her dreams had come true in one instance only to be swept away by the actions of a man who had once been her most trusted council. It was the one that had set the stage for her to promise her heart to him only to have him not keep up his part of the bargain.  


“I am going to tell you a story, a legend among our people. It’s about a woman warrior…”

The bottom of the bottle seemed to get shallower and shallower all the time. He was certain of it. No sooner did he sit down for one drink and all of a sudden he was left holding an empty bottle and hating the universe once again.  


Those damned eyes of hers. They haunted him. He closed his eyes and she would be staring at him, hate bubbling over like it had been during their last encounter just outside the child advocate's hearing room. Then she had vanished without a trace, his daughter nestled in her womb. She was just gone, like she had never been. Sometimes, he couldn’t help but wonder if she had been nothing but a figment of his imagination, a dream he had somehow not been able to drag back into the waking world with him. 

She had even eluded Starfleet, which was a pretty amazing feat, at least in this quadrant, which made him begin to wonder if she even was still in this quadrant.  
Even Gretchen and Phoebe seemed to know nothing, or at least they were being extremely tight-lipped. At first, he had thought they were just covering for her, but then a year went by, and another and he could see the worry lines etch themselves a little deeper into Gretchen’s face. Marrying Patrick Shanahan had done her good, but it didn’t ease the hole Kathryn had stabbed into hear heart a second time. All she would say on the subject is: “Golden bird always finds her way back home.”  


Phoebe was of little more help, furious that Kathryn would take off without word of where she was going. She hated seeing their mother suffer because her sister was selfish. She understood that the first time was not her fault, but this time certainly was.  


He had even considered the fact that Starfleet might have snapped her up for an undercover or covert ops mission. Her knowledge base in regards to the Borg and her experiences in the Delta Quadrant might have made her a prime candidate for such, but he wasn’t sure this was likely since they seemed to also be looking for her, though not actively. After their review of the Delta Quadrant mission, she was hailed as a hero, exonerated from any wrong doing and, he had heard rumors they had wanted to promote her to Admiral.  


So that was it. Every trail he had followed had turned into a dead end. Every sighting of her he had investigated had turned into someone that had similar colored hair or a similar body shape, but he never found her.  


Alcohol seemed to be the only thing that quieted the demons eating him away inside. If only he had been more understanding of her feelings, if only he had listened to her side, accepted that she did what she thought she had to. If only he hadn’t threatened to take their daughter away from her, if only he had been more civil, tried to work things out better, he might have had them both in his life.  


Now, he had nothing. He still didn’t know why Seven had left him in the middle of the night. He didn’t remember much about that night other than he was haunted by a dream of making love to Kathryn. The next thing he knew, he woke up with a hangover that could have killed a Klingon warrior and a Dear John letter from Seven telling him she had decided to take a position in a science research institute on Vulcan and that she did not have any interest in continuing their courtship or any future communications with him.  


Feeling a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders for him, he had gone to find Kathryn, try to talk to her, to work things out, at least so that they could be amicable for the sake of the child she was going to give him, but she had been already gone.  
Once his leads ran out, he had taken to drowning his nightly sorrows in the deepest bottle he could find. It wasn’t his nature, or his style and he didn’t care. He liked the way the alcohol burned him inside and washed her away for a while. He could have a few moments' peace from the imaginings of a blue eyed little girl playing on a snowy hillside in a heavy parka, watching how the sunlight danced red across a mountain.


	5. Two Years Later - Cerrion

“Happy Fifth Birthday, my beautiful Ayasha!” she beamed as she watched her daughter blow out the candles on her cake. Naturally, it was chocolate with caramel frosting, Ayasha’s favorite.  


“I can hardly believe you have been here for five years!” Ah’Latica exclaimed. “It seems like just yesterday when you were stepping off of that transport ship, so lost and alone.”  


She smiled, watching as Ayasha snuck a taste of the frosting from her fingertip, too impatient to wait for the cutting of the cake. “And you have been the most wonderful friend to me, Ah’Latica.”  


“Mama, did you get me a good present this year?” Ayasha asked, still impatiently eyeing the cake.  


“Your present should be coming on today’s supply ship. If we eat our cake quickly, we can go and wait for it,” she told her. She was really excited to see what Ayasha thought of her gift. Six months ago, for her birthday, Delsie had gotten a hovercycle and Ayasha had been quietly envious. With summer having come to Cerrion, the girls would be able to ride all over the settlement together.  


“Ooo, I am so excited to see your present!” Delsie exclaimed, her lilac eyes going wide with excitement.  


“Hurry, Mama, cut the cake so we can eat!!” Ayasha exclaimed. 

Dull. Boring. Routine. And he loved it. After spending seven years in the Delta Quadrant, he couldn’t say he was unhappy with his job. At least on a supply ship they weren’t dodging phaser fire or threat of being assimilated. He had a nice, quiet job and he liked it. The bucket of bolts he was on allowed him to visit some of the most beautiful planets in the quadrant in the safest manner possible.  
Angelo Tassoni had tried to forget his past. The Equinox, Voyager, all of it. He liked where he was. He liked his routine. He could do his job then forget about it. He didn’t have to dwell on every decision and wonder if he was putting someone’s life at stake.  


When he felt the ship touch-down, he waited for the light to signal that the landing cycle was complete then slapped the control that released the cargo hold doors. White light poured into the cargo hold as he prepared the hover dolly. He knew he had never been to Cerrion before, hadn’t even bothered to read up on it either. He could see that the star was a white dwarf and the warmth was enough to make him sweat under his light jumpsuit so they must have been quite a ways away from the sun in order to keep from burning up.  


Angelo loaded the dolly then directed it through the cargo bay door and down the plank. He almost immediately noticed the women and children waiting off to the side. The native woman of this planet wasn’t too unfortunate though a little long of leg and arm for him, but the other woman with her was… at least she looked human. The dark hair glimmering with highlights the color of red embers caught his attention. He had always been a sucker for a brunette. As he got closer, the green eyes glimmered from a face he recognized. He knew that face… wait he knew that figure… it couldn’t be… holy hell…  


“Janeway?”  


Her eyes locked on him, a look of surprise and shock passed across her face. “I beg your pardon?”  


“You’re Captain Janeway, you changed your hair and eyes, but I would know that voice anywhere!”  


She covered her look of shock and surprise at being recognized with a look of confusion. “I am sorry, you must be mistaken. My name is Nicole Jenkins.”  


“No way. We were in the Delta Quadrant for years…”  


“Young man, I assure you that you are mistaken,” she cut him off firmly. To the child at her side she said: “Come along, Ayasha; we will check back later for your hover bike.” Then she turned on her heel and stormed off.  


Angelo stared after her, knowing he wasn’t mistaken, wondering why she would be using an assumed name, why she would deny the fact that she was Kathryn Janeway. Then he began to wonder if she might be on some cover ops mission. But, if that was true, where did the child come from? And why in the world did she look like his former commander, Chakotay? The last time he had seen Chakotay had been when he had run with a supply ship to Trebus. He had found him in a bar, drunk as a skunk and had been babbling that Kathryn Janeway had disappeared and no one knew where she was. He hadn’t paid much attention to anything other than the fact that, unbeknownst to Chakotay, he had also picked up Angelo’s tab too. 

She still couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder. It had been six months since she had unwittingly run into Angelo Tassoni while picking up Ayasha’s hover bike, which she was madly in love with and completely disappointed that she was not permitted to ride it during the winter time. And, winter had come hard this year which had meant even the ra’nan’opa flowers had a hard time blooming. This winter had come with plenty of ice rains, more than they normally got, making the snow much more difficult for the annual show of ruby red flowers dazzling the mountain side.  


“Mama, why are we alone here?”  


“We are not alone, darling. We have Ah’Latica and Delsie here.”  


Ayasha puzzled this for a moment before continuing. “But, they look different than us. We are the only humans here. Do we have other family? I know Delsie’s father died, but do I have a father?”  


She knew this was coming. And, even though she had five years to prepare for this, she still had not come up with an answer. She did not want to lie to her daughter, but what could she do? What was she to say? “Yes, he is far away, on Earth.”  


“Have I ever met him?”  


“No. We came here before you were born, you know that.”  


“I want to meet him. Why doesn’t he come visit us?”  


She sighed. She didn’t want to deal with this, didn’t want to have to tell her the truth. “He is very busy, love, but perhaps someday.”  


Ayasha turned her attention back to the book she was flipping through, not really paying attention to anything besides the colorful pictures. She puzzled her next question then decided to ask it, despite her misgivings. “Remember when we went to get my hover bike and that human male was there? Why did he call you by the wrong name?”  


“He thought I was someone else.”  


Ayasha knew she would never forget the human male calling her Captain Janeway. She suddenly felt very uncertain of everything, very concerned that her mother, to whom she was completely devoted, might not be telling her everything. Even as she returned her focus to the orange and purple butterfly that was winking at her from the pages of the book, she felt very unsettled. 

_Orange and purple butterflies fluttered over her head as he watched her from a distance, dancing around in a field of tall lime green grass dotted with pink puff ball flowers that broke apart and scattered on the breeze whenever she bumped into one. Her long, gossamer black hair danced with traces of auburn highlights as she twirled around, her hands held high, reaching towards the little, delicate creatures that flittered just out of the reach of her fingers. Her sun-kissed skin glowed warmly in the light of the white-hot star, her blue eyes were like two orbs of neon fire in her perfect, oval shaped face. She was magnificent. She was more beautiful than anything he had ever laid his eyes on.  
_

__“Daddy, please come and catch one of the butterflies for me!” she called, waving to him.  
_ _

___He never thought he would ever hear anyone call him daddy. His heart swelled with pride, with a joyfulness that was just waiting to burst from his chest. “No, darling, it wouldn’t be right to make such a creature captive. It would kill its spirit for it to live in a cage, but if you hold real still, one might land on your arm so that you might have a closer look and make friends.”  
_ _ _

____The child froze from her twirling and thrust her arms out to her sides, pink petals from the unusual flowers gathered in her long hair and on the cloth of her simple white dress. She watched with quick, curious eyes, observing how the butterflies soared and floated on the currents then came to land on the bulbs of the flowers around her, the ones her twirling had not dislodged and sent floating in the air. She was patient for such a young child and she stood there, still as can be until, very slowly, a single butterfly braved the strange creature before it and landed on her arm to investigate one of the pink flower petals that had landed there. Her eyes widened in surprise as she watched the creature, fixated on it, awestruck. It crawled up and down her arm, tasting her with its feet, obviously liking the sweet residue left there by the broken flowers. Then, ever so slowly, with the index finger of her other hand, she reached up behind the tiny creature and lightly caressed the length of his thorax, being careful not to touch the fragile wings.  
_ _ _ _

____Now it was his turn to stare, awestruck. Never before had he seen such a timid creature sit long enough for a child to caress and stroke it. He watched as the butterfly waited patiently on her arm to be caressed, it was almost as though the tiny insect was enjoying the moment as much as the child.  
_ _ _ _

____When the little finger retreated from its back, it sat for a moment longer before taking to flight again, hovering and fluttering just in front of her face. Without warning, it darted in, its tiny face coming into contact with her nose before fluttering above her head, out of reach. It didn’t take off, but rather hovered there as though it were waiting.  
_ _ _ _

____“Goodbye, Daddy!” she called.  
_ _ _ _

____“No, where are you going?” He called, anxiety spilling into his bloodstream, his heart quickening. He watched, horror-stricken as orange and purple wings opened out from her back and, as care-free and practiced as a butterfly, she took to flight next to the tiny creature that had kissed her nose.  
_ _ _ _

____“Goodbye!” she called again, then flitted into the sky.  
_ _ _ _

____This time, it was he who found himself reaching towards the sky, reaching for her, trying to catch her in his arms, to bring her back to him. “Come back! Please come back to me!” he called, tears burning his eyes as he reached into empty air._ _ _ _

____

Chakotay awoke, reaching straight up above his head, his hands smashing into the headboard, tears like fire on his cheeks. The anguish remained as he woke fully to realize it was a dream. He had been dreaming of a child he had never met. A beautiful little girl that looked like the perfect meld of his and Kathryn’s genes whom he had never had the privilege of knowing.  


He ripped back the blanket; still feeling like the alcohol was rolling through his veins. He had to stop this. The nightly benders he went on to kill his agony and pain had done nothing but helped him to continue to lose everything.  


He had left Earth, left the teaching job he had taken at the Academy, resigned his commission and set out for Trebus. And he never stopped looking for her. It had been five years now since she had disappeared from the universe, but he knew she was out there. He knew that somewhere in the vast, inky blackness of the universe he had a daughter who was celebrating her fifth birthday. He met her in his dreams, had seen her grow in his subconscious. But that was never enough. It would never be enough.  


After a splash of icy water on his face, he stared at his reflection. This was not the face he had known five years ago. This was the face of a stranger, gaunt with worry, eyes full of sorrow, five o’clock shadow at his jaw-line. He didn’t take very good care of himself and he lived with the constant regret of his decisions. If only’s were his constant companion.  


If only he had waited for Kathryn as he had promised himself he would. If only he had been more understanding of her. If only he hadn’t reacted with anger over finding out what she had done. If only he hadn’t dragged her in front of the child advocate board. If only… if only… if only.  


There was one thing in the universe he desired, and that was to make things right with Kathryn. Yes, she had done wrong, but he had done her an even greater wrong. He had failed in the promise he had made her one night in a cramped little shelter with the beige sides in, over a little table as he made plans of how he was going to make a home out of a plain box. He had promised to stand by her side, to make her burdens lighter. He had known peace in those days. But, the contrary in him couldn’t just accept that peace. He had to have more and, when she had been unable to give him more, he had sought it elsewhere. What a fool he was. If he had only kept that promise, things would have been different.  


Now, he just wanted the chance to make things different with her. He still loved her. Despite everything that had happened, his heart still burned for her. In his waking moments, she was his constant companion in his mind. In his dreams, he dreamt about their daughter and sometimes about the life they should have been having.  


So, here he was on Trebus, the scars from the last war still gouged deeply into the planet itself. By day, he worked at organizing shipments of supplies, incoming and outgoing, by night he drown himself in the deepest, harshest bottle he could find. It wasn’t much of a life, but it was the one he had now. Every night, he knew he had to walk away from the tears of the Spirtis, from the evil liquid-fire that killed his pain, but he never found himself able to. He couldn’t resist the chance to enjoy a few moments he found in his drunkenness where he could forget… forget how badly he had fucked up his life for the chilly affection of a beautiful blond who looked like she had been cast in a mold by a very sexist male.  


He hated his work. Even as he found himself trudging into the shipping yards with a hangover that could have killed even the mightiest of Klingon warriors, he knew it was going to be the same day he had repeated over and over since he had found his way here. He took a position where he could be useful, people left him alone and he had zero responsibility. This was his way of getting by.  


The ship whirring above him, gliding in for a landing, brought back memories of a more pleasant time. They had wanted to get back to the Alpha Quadrant so badly, but for what? For this life? This wasn’t how they had planned it. Late at night, laughing and conversing over hidden bottles of hard cider, wine or other intoxicants, they had each shared their own idyllic version of what they would come home to. He had been glad when she had stopped talking about Mark so much and, despite how hard she had taken it, he had also been secretly glad when she had gotten her Dear John letter from Mark. In his mind, it finally freed her to be his and his alone.  


When the ship finally settled on the ground and the hatch began to lower, he shook away thoughts of her. It was hard to concentrate on his work when she was on his mind. He gazed up towards the platform, wondering which asshole shipping clerk he would have the pleasure of dealing with today, then the face came into view and he felt the flicker of recognition. Voyager. Equinox.  


“Angelo Tassoni?” he said, more questioning his own recognition of the man before him.  


“Hey, Commander, long time no see! Man, I run into her on one side of the quadrant and you on the other, how about that! Do you think you got enough space between the two of you?” he asked, flipping the P.A.D.D. towards him with the list of shipping containers and their contents.  


Chakotay’s eyes widened and he didn’t dare believe what he had heard through the fog in his ears. “Her, who?” he asked, cautiously. It was too good to believe, too good to even hope for… did he dare…  


“Janeway. Would know that voice anywhere, though she has changed her look and even her name. She calls herself Nicole now. Got a little girl who calls her mama too. Commander, you look like you have seen a ghost!”  


“Not yet,” he replied. “Where did you see her, how long ago?” he asked, scribbling his consent on the P.A.D.D. without ever really reading it.  


“It’s been about six or eight months now. Hell, it was on the border of the Beta Quadrant, some cold planet. I can check the logs if you want.” Tassoni replied, using the hover cart to begin unloading.  


“Do you think you can check now? I can get someone to unload that,” Chakotay replied, anxiously. He had to know where she was. He had to find her. After five years, he had never been this close, had not even heard a word about her whereabouts.  
Angelo considered the man who had been his Commander for several years. He had always found him to be very solid and sturdy but now, he seemed as anxious and jumpy as a cadet with fire ants in his pants. “Cerrion.”  


“What?”  


“The planet. It’s called Cerrion. I don’t know why anyone would want to live there, especially Janeway since she was so keen on getting back to Earth.”  


Cerrion. Chakotay rushed to the nearest terminal and booked passage as soon as he could. The next transport ship was coming in that afternoon. He had to pack and work on making himself look presentable. Right now, he looked like a hung over drunk who didn’t even own a mirror. “Thanks, Tassoni. It was great to see you,” he called as he hurried out of the warehouse. With any luck, he would never be returning.


	6. Chapter 6

Eight months had passed since her encounter with Tassoni and she felt reasonably safe again. The chances of him telling anyone he had met a woman with the likeness of their former captain were slim. Besides, who would believe she had come all the way to Cerrion? It was on the far reaches of the Alpha Quadrant and she had been the one hell bent to get back to Earth. She was surprised none of them really searched for her. She had monitored the news broadcasts, had laughed at the Janeway watch when she had disappeared, but that had all quieted. The only thing that was the hardest was not seeing her mother and Phoebe. She had fought so hard to get home to them only to leave again.  


“Nicole, are we ready?”  


She tore herself from her musing, smiling up at Tal’Re’Theit. He had taken an interest in her when she had first arrived, but had kept his distance, not certain what to make of the human woman arriving alone on his home planet with a child on the way. After Ayasha’s birth, he had become a friend, though not as close as Ah’Latica and Delsie. He would help her with the maintenance around her home that she wasn’t capable of on her own. But, over the last four months, he had been asserting his interest in her with more certainty.  


She had to admit that, for a Cerrion, he was one of the more handsome among the males of the species. He was tall, almost a full three meters tall and lean. His skin tone was the color of fresh snow and his hair was a caramel ripple across his scalp, the same color of the caramel her mother baked into her brownies. His eyes were opalescent, but a bit darker than the typical lavender. He was strong, unbelievably so for a man whose bones were hollow. He could sweep her up into his arms without any strain, which he had proven to her one afternoon during the winter when she had slipped on a patch of ice.  


They had grown close, but she continued keeping him at an arm’s length from her heart. She liked him, he was wonderful with Ayasha, but she couldn’t let herself feel anything more for him than the feelings of a close friend. She felt for him the same love and affection she felt for Tuvok. She certainly couldn’t love him since, as much as she tried not to, she still loved another.  


She had tried to quell her feelings for Chakotay. By now, he was a married man and probably raising his little Borglets… She immediately admonished herself for such a thought. She was a horrible person for thinking of his and Seven’s children in such a manner, but it was hard not to. She could see Seven organizing their children into her own personal little collective to be more efficient and strive towards perfection. And, Chakotay would hate it. She could see him fighting to preserve humanity in their home, trying to introduce their children to tribal ways that Seven would call antiquated and irrelevant. She hoped he was happy.  


And that thought made her ache even more. A hole burrowed a little deeper into her heart every time she thought of him, thought of them together and all of the love and guidance from her father that Ayasha was without because of his decisions.  


But, despite it all. She still loved him. Or maybe she was in love with the memory of a man who didn’t even exist anymore. She loved the tender soul who had held her hand over their little kitchen table in a quiet little shelter that he worked so hard at making more than just a plain grey box. She loved the man who had poured his love and sweat into making her a bathtub. She loved the man who had held her underneath a table as she watched their hopes of ever leaving New Earth destroyed. She loved the man who had lain her down and made love to her, passionately, tenderly and who had dumped his seed within her, the seed that had eventually bloomed into Ayasha. She tingled within thinking about him, mourned all they could have had.  


Could have had was a dream. She had to live in reality. She had to enjoy all that she did have now: her quiet, simple little life on Cerrion with her jewel, her perfect Ayasha.  


“Yes, Tal’Re’Theit, I am ready to go to the Renewal Festival,” she replied, checking her appearance in the mirror. The dress she wore clung to every curve as though it had been made just for her, the gold fabric was so soft and delicate, as though it had been spun from a cloud and it shimmered like rays of sunshine as she walked. Her dark locks, now down to her waist, were piled in a waterfall of curls on the top of her head. She was never one to be vain, but she actually felt as beautiful as the reflection she saw in the mirror gazing back at her as she stood before it.  


“I’m ready, too!” Ayasha cried, excitedly, pushing in front of the mirror to flirt with her reflection. She looked so grown up, her long, glossy black hair pinned up with two delicate curls at her cheeks. She had picked a fluffy gown the exact shade of lavender as her best friend, Delsie’s, eyes.  


“My sweet little love, you look just gorgeous!”  


“So do you, Mama! Can we go? I don’t want to miss the dancing and the rul’jeth rolls! Delsie told me her mama was making them for the festival!”  


“Well, I guess we need to be going then, don’t we?” She smiled invitingly at Tal’Re’Theit as he held the door for them and gestured them into his hover car.  


Tal’Re’Theit was very happy Nicole had accepted his invitation to be her escort to the Renewal Festival. It was his favorite time of year when the snows of winter receded and life began to renew itself. He had been curious about her since her arrival. She had seemed so lost, alone and as though she were hiding from something. Even though the years had passed and he had not learned much more about her, he had come to realize that she was alone and that the father of her child did not seem to be coming to join her or lay claim to her.  


Ayasha was now five years of age and just as lovely as her mother. He found her entertaining and charismatic. Tal’Re’Theit had never fancied himself a father figure and still was not sure how well he would fit into such a roll, if Nicole gave him the opportunity, but at least Ayasha seemed fond of him. That was a start.  


As for Nicole, he found her enchanting. All she had to do was enter the room to make his entire world seem more alive. She was brilliant, beautiful and the part of his life he had come to realize he had been lacking. He desired her as he had never desired any other woman. Of course, he didn’t have a clue how to convey this to her. She was so independent, strong. Her customs were very unlike the native women of his planet. Through his studies, he had come to learn that it was completely acceptable for human women never to take a mate. In his culture, mates were taken for life. He hadn’t taken a mate because, until now, he hadn’t found the right woman. Maybe tonight, he would tell her of his desire for her.

He hated transport ships. They were cramped, dirty and he was certain the air recirculation and purification system hadn’t been serviced in about fifty years. Voyager had spoiled him when it had come to the size of the accommodations. Of course he had taken what had originally been intended as Tuvok’s quarters, putting him next door to Kathryn. He could have taken Cavit’s but it was the one concession he had made as his way of trying to build a bridge between himself and the Vulcan who he tried very hard not to see as having betrayed him. That, and early on in their journey he had wanted to keep tabs on his Captain and know what she was up to. Later, he had been glad for the convenience.  


It had been nearly two months since he had left Trebus. That was the other thing he despised. When he had been in Starfleet, when they were given an order to go somewhere, they went the most direct course. With transport ships, they just lazily meandered their way through the Quadrant, stopping at this port and that port. Hell, by the time he arrived at Cerrion he was afraid that Kathryn and his little girl wouldn’t even be there!  


Chakotay was glad he was finally nearing Cerrion. They would be coming into the system that evening and he was anxious. His dreams of the little girl he had never met were growing clearer and more prominent during his sleep the closer they got to the planet.  


He wasn’t confident that his reception would be a warm one. Kathryn had done everything she could to make sure she wasn’t found. She had even changed her name to Nicole. Obviously their last exchange had struck fear into her that he would take their child from her. He had threatened that but only because he had feared for their daughter, feared that Kathryn would never give her life, never be around for her. From what he could tell, she had done everything he had feared she wouldn’t. She gave up her life in Starfleet and, well had given up her life period for their daughter to do what she thought was best. How could he have been so wrong about her?

The festival was spectacular and her feet were sore from dancing. The last time she had danced so much had been at Voyager’s welcome home reception. It had seemed that every Admiral and Captain had wanted to spin her around the dance floor. She had remembered, between his schmoozing over Seven, his burning eyes on her, seething, and she hadn’t cared. With every spin on the dance floor he had grown more furious and she knew it was from more than the secret she had revealed to him. She could see those dark eyes of his growing green with jealousy, despite the fact that he probably had the most stunningly beautiful woman on his arm. Too bad for him she was as cold as a fish.  


“Poor kiddo is all tuckered out,” she tousled her daughter’s hair as Tal’Re’Theit carried Ayasha in his arms. She had fallen asleep under one of the tables that had been set up in the city gardens for the Renewal Festival. They had been in bloom with the most fragrant flowers and she was certain they had been more full and beautiful than they ever had been before, dazzling with their array of white and gold blossoms, perfuming the air with the intoxicating scent of something she could only describe as a blend of honeysuckle and freesia.  


“I believe she and Delsie had a grand time. I also believe they ate far too many rul’jeth rolls.” Tal’Re’Theit said, gazing down at the little girl in his arms. She wasn’t his own, but he was starting to believe he could think of her in such a way.  


“You’re probably right,” she laughed, “but the festival only comes once a year. It is okay for her to be spoiled now and again.” They paused at her door and she knew the awkward moment was coming. “Well, I guess I had better put her to bed,” she said, stretching her arms out to accept her sleeping daughter.  


“I’ll carry her in for you, Nicole. Besides, I wouldn’t mind a little conversation after Ayasha is tucked into her bed.”  


She gazed up at him, his alien face sincere and anxious. It had been so long since she had been close to a man and part of her feared it, even though Tal’Re’Theit had always been kind and gentle towards her, she just didn’t know if she was ready to risk so much of herself. Becoming intimate with him meant sharing her secrets and that left herself and Ayasha exposed. She just wasn’t ready to let her guard down like that, especially since unresolved feelings for another man, a married man, still tumbled around within her.  


“Thank you, I’ll show you to her room,” she found herself saying, which was totally out of character. What was she thinking? The thought of his warmth next to her, arms holding her… something inside of her ached to be touched. It had been since Ayasha’s initial conception since a man had touched her in such a way, laid her down and made love to her. Holograms didn’t count. Kashyk had tried. Q had tried harder and part of her, though she would never have admitted it to him, had enjoyed the thrilled rush that had burned within when he had touched her, held her in his arms so intimately. He was as close of an approximation to a God, which her species had rose upon such a pillar of greatness and she couldn’t help be flattered by his desire for her, the same desire that had found him in her bathtub with her, which she had immediately evoked a repelling response. What he had offered her was dangerous because it had been so tempting. In the end, she had been glad that she held fast to her promise to her crew and her principles.  


She led Tal’Re’Theit to Ayasha’s room where he gently laid her on the bed then stepped back, watching her remove the jeweled sandals from her feet then covered her to her chin before pressing a kiss to her forehead and gesturing for them to leave her to her dreams.  


“Can I get you anything?” she asked as they returned to the sitting area.  


“No, please just join me,” he requested, taking a seat on the plush sofa, pausing while she joined him. “Nicole, I want to be forward. This is not easy for me, so please understand if I stumble a bit. Men on my planet typically choose their life mate at a much younger age than I. The only reason why I have waited so long is because I have not met the right woman. But now, becoming acquainted with you makes me think I might want to consider the possibilities between us. I find you fascinating, beautiful and possessing all of the qualities I desire in a mate. And, should such a day come that we were to join our lives together as mates, I can promise you that I would accept your Ayasha as though she were my own child.”  


Her breath caught in her throat. She had assumed he had been looking for a night of warmth and passion, perhaps a casual affair. She had not truly believed he had been thinking of asking her to be his life mate! “Tal’Re’Theit, I don’t know what to say. I am honored by your desire for me to become your life mate, however this is not something I was expecting nor a decision I can make so quickly. In my culture, men and women spend a great deal of time getting to know one another, sometimes they even live together to be certain they are compatible.”  


“Share a household before the joining ritual?” He puzzled this thought. It was just something that wasn’t done on his world. Men and women did not live together and practice being mates, they just mated. If differences appeared later on, they worked out a compromise.  


“Yes, in my culture, we spend time with our prospective life partner, attend ceremonies, festivals and all kinds of events together, as we did tonight.”  


“And how long does this spending time take place?” Tal’Re’Theit asked, liking the idea of spending time with her more than sharing a household before a joining ritual.  


“Months, sometimes years. I suppose it depends on the individuals involved,” she replied. Never having been to the alter herself but having been in relationships, she knew that years would be a more precise measurement for herself.  


“That is something I can do. I would be happy to spend more time with you, Nicole.” Tal’Re’Theit noticed the warmth from her body against his own, not completely uncomfortable with the idea that she had sat so close and seemed to have moved closer. “What an interesting culture you come from. And, what does your culture say about joining physically with a prospective life mate prior to the ceremony?”  


She felt her heart thundering in her chest at the notion. Could she have a one night stand with this man? Or a relationship built on the physical? She had never done such things, always holding herself back until she knew she was in love. “Varying degrees of physical intimacies are practiced between couples in my culture who are planning to join their lives together and others abstain from such…” And then his mouth was on hers, his tongue much smoother and harder than hers. He wasn’t the first alien she had kissed, but there was something about the way his presence seemed to make her head swim with desire.  


She didn’t stop him when his hands slid up her legs and under the skirt of her dress, couldn’t raise a protest in her throat when he laid her back onto the couch and knelt between her shamelessly open thighs. She felt as though she were drowning in new desire for him that she hadn’t a clue where it had come from. She almost felt as though she had been drugged. She inhaled sharply and a fresh new assault of desire swarmed through her body, then it dawned on her as she moaned against the hand that had dipped its way into her panties, hastily ripping them clean from her body. Pheromones. His pheromones were acting upon her like a powerful aphrodisiac and making her drunk with a desire that she truly didn’t have. She didn’t want him like this, not now. His mouth was hot on her throat, his hand slid aside and she felt something hard and smooth pressing against her thigh as he adjusted himself to penetrate her.  


“No!” The word exploded from her throat and through her pheromone induced intoxication. “Stop!”  


“Nicole, you want me, I can tell it in your face,” he insisted, his member poised to penetrate the hot, wet depths of her tight alien physiology.  


“It’s not me,” she whispered urgently, the drug inhaled in her system nearly rendering her powerless to stop what she didn’t want. “Your scent, it’s acting like a drug on me. You must stop, please!”  


Tal’Re’Theit had no intention of making her do something she was not asking for, despite the glazed look in her eyes and the warm, wet invitation her body had given him. “I don’t understand,” he said, pulling back and trying to quell his desire.  


“I am not versed enough in the effects of your physiology on mine, but I think the pheromones your body produces when you are aroused act like a very powerful aphrodisiac on me. I’m sorry but I am not ready for such a step in our acquaintance. I hope you understand.”  


“I understand. I did not realize I could have such a strong affect upon you, Nicole. Forgive me. I suppose in the future we will have to be more careful.”  


She smiled warmly, feeling her head clear and the insatiable hunger disappearing from her body. “Perhaps I had best show you out tonight. I am very tired.”  


“As you wish,” he replied, trying to be sensitive to her feelings, though he was afraid he had made a terrible misstep, even it if was beyond his physical control. When she opened the door for him, he paused and turned back to her. “Pleasant good night, Nicole.” He bowed low enough to her to press a kiss, intending to touch his lips to her cheek, but finding her mouth again. His arms automatically wound around her waist as she opened her mouth to him. Perhaps it was not just his physiology that was intoxicating, for he felt drunk with desire for her and could have taken her that very moment, right in her doorway without a care in the universe who could see.  


She relished in the moment, losing herself for a split second in the kiss she had accidentally turned into. Maybe she was wrong about seeing him out and should have been seeing him into her bed, after all, with the effect his pheromones had on her, she was bound to find great satisfaction in him as a lover.  


No. She was doing the right thing. Before she could change her mind, she pulled back. “Good night, Tal’Re’Theit,” she smiled, shyly, before closing the door.  


When she clicked the lock, she inhaled deeply, feeling the drug that was his scent dissipating from her brain. Never before had she come into contact with a culture where the very scent of their arousal made her feel like she was drunk and pliable. She knew she would have to take great care not to find herself in a situation where she could lose control and, it was a concern for Ayasha when she reached maturity that she would have to keep in mind. If she were on Earth, she would ask the Doctor to whip up something in a hypospray that would render her immune to the effects of the Cerrions body chemistry, but they were a long way from Earth and she would just have to take extra precautions. 

She hadn’t been hard to find. A human and her child on Cerrion were easy to locate. He was told that the only other human on the planet was a man on one of the polar ice caps of the planet taking core samples and doing geological studies. She hadn’t been home so he had waited, watching for her to return. He had been told she had changed her hair and her eyes and was calling herself Nicole.  


Seeing her escorted to the door with a man didn’t surprise him much. From the distance he was at, he wasn’t able to get a good look at her, but he knew it was her, judging from her walk, the way she carried herself and her inflections. And the sleeping child in the man’s arms was presumably his daughter.  


Watching as she invited him into her home was like a pain shooting straight to his heart. Was it possibly she had truly moved on, taken another mate? Was his child calling this Cerrion Daddy? The thought broke his heart, especially as he waited, realizing that the man was not immediately leaving.  


His blood began to boil, despite his brain trying to contest the feelings that were raging through him. What gave him the right to believe she hadn’t moved on? But that didn’t matter to his heart. He had traveled hundreds of light years, hoping they might be able to make amends and praying that they could actually be a family. Now, he felt like a pitiful fool. A pitiful fool that had become a drunk. Well, he wasn’t about to give up without a fight. He had loved her too long, had watched their possibilities for the future washed straight down the drain with his poor decisions. Not again.  


When the man finally left her home after a very intense kiss at her door, he began trying to wrap his mind around her having taken a casual lover. Naturally, he was relieved to know that she was not married to this man, but it just wasn’t like her to invite a man in, lay down with him then see him to the door. And, what a poor lover that Cerrion fool must have been. They hadn’t been in her home nearly long enough for him to even be adequate let alone good.  


It turned his stomach to think of her with someone else and suddenly, he understood how she must have felt on Voyager when she learned of his involvement with Seven. He truly was a fool and now he fully understood why she had disappeared altogether. It was hard enough for her to think of the man she loved being with another woman let alone having that woman birth then raise her child. His anger had driven her away due to the choice he had imposed upon her.  


But, that didn’t change the fact that he had come all this way to learn that she was being bed by another man. It was more than he could tolerate. He couldn’t even think of another man touching her, then to witness the kiss at the door… it was as though he had been trying to devour her alive.  


He pounded on her front door, knowing she was awake; fresh from her lover. He knew exactly what he planned to say to her, it was hovering on the tip of his tongue, but when she pulled open the door for him, the words melted away.  


She looked... well stunning. He didn’t like the change of hair and he especially didn’t like the change of her eye color, but just to be standing in her doorway facing her, it was almost like a dream come true after so long. 

She gasped as she opened her door, shock and adrenaline pumping through her veins. She had expected it to be Tel’Re’Theit or Ah’Latica or even Bayleigha but not him, never him. How could he have found her? She knew how. Angelo Tassoni. It had to be.  


“Chakotay… wha… what are you doing here?”  


“You know why I am here, Kathryn. Or should I call you Nicole?”  


Ever eyes narrowed as she tightened her grip on the door handle and closed it as tight as she could with her body between the door and the jam. “You are not taking her. You came a long way for nothing, Chakotay.”  


“So I see. I never knew you to take a lover so lightly, though I am glad he left so we could talk privately. I’m sure you haven’t told anyone here of your true identity. I wouldn’t want to ruin your perfect little life here.”  


“My perfect little life? I wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t threatened to take my daughter away from me! And why are you here? Shouldn’t you be playing house with your Borg doll and your little collective of children?” she threw back at him, feeling very angry at him for his assumptions.  


This was not at all how he planned for the conversation to go. Five years apart and they still fought over some of the most petty things, the things that just didn’t matter at all. “For your information, Kathryn, I have not been with Seven since shortly after the hearing at the advocacy board. I haven’t been with… with anyone actually.”  


She didn’t let up. He had made her very angry and she wanted to make sure he knew it, her green eyes narrowing to a glower. “You mean you finally wised up? I am surprised. It was almost as though you were her personal assimilated…”  


“She left me, actually,” he interrupted her. “Maybe we had better take this conversation inside?” He didn’t want to air his dirty laundry to anyone who might happen by, let alone her enamored suitor should he come back by.  


Seven had left him? That made her pause. What could he have done to make Seven walk away from him? It wasn’t like she had many options as to a mate, not that she and Chakotay had made a bit of sense to her or anyone else for that matter, but that wasn’t the point. What could have happened between the happy couple? She stepped aside and gestured for him to enter though her expression remained unmoved, despite the surprise within.  


Seeing Chakotay inside her humble little home was something her mind wasn’t quite prepared to wrap around. After years in the Delta Quadrant and even longer as a Starfleet Captain, she had been hardened not to find much of anything shocking, but she had never thought this moment would arrive. In the beginning, she had daydreamed about him showing up, sweeping her off of her feet, apologies dripping from his lips and she had allowed herself to believe when he told her his affair with Seven was nothing but a mistake, that it was she he really loved. As the years of her self-imposed exile wore on, she came to realize that the secret fantasies were just the burnt out remnants of her former dreams of them and they slowly dissipated. She replaced them with the embers of anger she continued to stoke in her heart, seeing him married to Seven, watching as she birthed little perfect replicas of them, watching them interact, seeing Chakotay damned to a life surrounded by cold, unemotional little children who behaved more like robots than people. It was a small victory in her mind to hope he was unhappy with the path he had chosen.  


“Kathryn, I…” he stepped towards her, wanting to take her into his arms, tell her how terribly he had wronged her.  


She stopped him with a hand to his chest, the hard muscles underneath her hand belying a warmth and strength she had remembered being cocooned against as the fervor of a plasma storm raged beyond the door of their cabin. She shook away the memory that threatened to distort her current feelings towards him. She couldn’t think of the heat of his body melded with hers. No, her mind had to stay on how terribly he had hurt her, how he had betrayed their unspoken promise to one another.  


“Should we be expecting your lover any time soon?” he asked, distaste clear in his voice.  


“Not that it is really any of your business, but he is not my lover. In fact, if you must know, there hasn’t been anyone since you, Chakotay.” She stepped him back, placing some distance between them. “So, you’re here. What do you want?”  


“I have not stopped looking for you since you disappeared, Kathryn. At first, I was angry, furious that you would disappear with my child, but I assumed I would find you. It became clear that you had disappeared without a trace and, if she even knew where you were, your mother wasn’t talking. I began to realize what I must have done to you, how you must have felt. I still can’t say I fully understand why you didn’t just come to me when you initially found out you were pregnant.”  


She sighed. “Chakotay, we are not going to go round and round about this again.”  


"No, Kathryn,” he grabbed her hand, tucking it between his, “it doesn’t matter. What’s done is done and we can’t change that. The important thing is, after all of the searching and wondering, I found you. What matters is where we go from here.”  


She pulled her hand back, still not ready to reconcile. “Chakotay, you hurt me, terribly. Do you have any idea how hard it was to be forced into silence through Riley and Kellin and then Seven? Do you even have a clue what it was like to watch you with them, knowing that I was helpless to tell you what you were doing to me? Maybe that was selfish, expecting you to wait faithfully for me all of those years, possibly giving up any hope of ever having a relationship or a family since there were no guarantees that we would ever get home, but it killed me, Chakotay. And then, to arrive home and having all of my hopes and dreams crushed? I began to wonder why I had fought so hard to get us home. At least when we were out there, I had the unknown, the hunger for things no one had ever seen before. Here, well, I came back to nothing I had dreamed about.”  


“And what about you, Kathryn? What about Q, Kashyk, Jaffen and that damned hologram? Do you think any of those were easy for me to deal with? You could have flings with them, but you couldn’t come to me?’  


She felt the hurt resonate deep, gazing up at him with surprise. “I never slept with them, Chakotay.”  


He was taken aback. He had assumed she hadn’t slept with Q, especially since he had mated with the female Q after much resistance from her, but he had been certain about Kashyk and Jaffen and that Irish hologram, Mick or Michael something. “You didn’t…”  


“No, despite the best efforts of some. Other than you, the closest thing I had to sex while we were on Voyager was when Paris abducted me after breaking the warp barrier and we changed into the evolved human-lizard creatures. You mean you thought…?” she trailed off, trying to keep the smirk from tugging at the corners of her mouth. “You were jealous of something that didn’t even happen?”  


Chakotay smiled at the ridiculous nature of his feelings. All of a sudden, he began to see what a fool he had been. And they had all thought Neelix had been the one with the legendary jealous streak; after all, it had been the cause of Paris wearing a plate of hair pasta, which had melted down into a combination food fight-wrestling match between the pair. “I am sorry for hurting you, Kathryn. Maybe feeling jealous, thinking you actually were having casual flings throughout our time on Voyager made me make decisions out of spite in return.”  


She laughed a little, but the light mood was just a cover. There were still feelings of hurt and mistrust floating between them. “I just feel such a jumbled mess right now. Part of me wants to be happy to see you and the other part of me feels like I should be running away. I have had a good life for the past five years; we have had a good life. The heat of the spot light back on Earth was a little too much. Do you know they had planned to make me an Admiral? All the years I spent, never wanting what my father had and they wanted to hand it to me on a silver platter. And for what? Braving the Delta Quadrant? Staying true to our principles, despite the insurmountable odds against us? Crippling the Borg for years to come? Bringing a starship home in one piece? Despite the situation revolving around us, I just couldn’t deal with that. I didn’t feel like I had earned it.”  


“But you did. Kathryn, you have never run away from anything and I know I did some pretty terrible things, said some things that were even worse, but to just disappear? They searched for you for a long time, thinking you had been abducted. The rumors the press circulated were insane.”  


She sat down on the couch and gestured for him to join her. “I was overwhelmed, Chakotay. The last thing I wanted was for our personal business to be splashed all over the headlines and I felt for certain that, as soon as I started showing pregnant, that the vultures would begin to circle. I didn’t want the promotion and I wasn’t even certain I wanted to continue with Starfleet. Being pregnant and knowing I had to run away if I wanted to keep my child was the only option, so I left. I changed my appearance, my name, everything. And out here, no one was the wiser. Hell, these people on the outskirts of the Alpha Quadrant have scarcely heard the name Kathryn Janeway let alone know what I look like. Cosmetically, it was easy, but leaving my mom was hard.”  


“She married, you know,” he said, his mind mulling on the fact that his daughter was probably asleep in the next room, the daughter he had dreamt about but never had the chance to meet. He wondered what she would do if he asked to see her.  


“Dr. Shanahan?” she asked, knowing she would be surprised to hear anything but.  


“Yes, a couple of years ago.”  


She smiled, ruefully. “I guess I am a better match maker for others than I am for myself. I am glad for them. He is a good man and she hadn’t smiled so much during a meal since Daddy was alive.”  


The room grew quiet for a bit with just the sound of the trees moving in the gentle stir of the breeze. They each spent a few moments in their heads with their own thoughts. He was deciding whether or not he should ask about their daughter, she was still overcoming the surprise that he was in her living room, sitting next to her on her couch.  


“Kathryn, what’s her name?” he asked, finally feeling brave enough to broach the subject.  


“You’re not going to take her from me,” she said, hesitant, almost unsure, though trying to put her convictions into her voice.  


He turned to her, unaccustomed to seeing such a fear in her eyes. She was never afraid of anything in the past so this was completely new territory for him. He took her hand in his, trying to ease her, hoping that she would be able to let her guard down with him again. This woman, with coffee-colored hair and green eyes was so different from the Kathryn he had known in the past. This woman had been softened by motherhood, almost in the same way a mother cat would purr loudly, affectionately as you pet her kittens, but threaten to hurt one and she would lash out and protect, even if it meant her life.  


“Kathryn, I promise you that if I ever take her, it will be because you are at my side,” he replied.  


She gazed into his eyes, so soft, so deep. He was unlike the man she had run from who had made no secret of his anger towards her, the fury burning in his eyes. The years had changed him and she was certain that someday they would both share their stories of the last five years over a cup of coffee. Her instincts relaxed a little as she remembered that this was the man whom she had loved, had given all of herself to for those brief weeks. He was the father of her child and that child had been conceived of nothing but pure, unadulterated love.  


“I named her Ayasha Erin. The name came to me in a dream and it just seemed to fit. Translated, it roughly means little one…”  


“Of Ireland,” he finished, liking the nod to Earth’s Native Americans and her own Irish heritage. “It is a beautiful name, Kathryn. Tell me about her.” He could tell he had hit on her favorite subject the way her unfamiliar green eyes lit up like emerald stars.  


“She is beautiful, Chakotay, more beautiful than I could have ever imagined she would be. She has your coloring and jet black hair with my eyes, though deeper like sapphires. And she is so smart. She shines like a thousand stars and is a pure delight.”  


Just listening to her talk about their daughter, he knew she was the little girl who came to him in his dreams. “I’ve seen her, but only in my dreams.”  


Suddenly, Kathryn felt terrible for having taken Ayasha away from him. She had robbed him of five years of her life, watching her being born, holding her as she took her first breaths, comforting her when she bumped her head for the first time, sharing in the excitement as she took her first steps, said her first words. “Forgive me, Chakotay,” she whispered, the vibrant feeling she got from talking about her little girl suddenly disappearing. “I was so afraid that you would take her away from me that I robbed you of one of the things you truly wanted. I stole her first five years from you.”  


“Let it go, Kathryn. We both did and said a lot of things that we shouldn’t have. Let’s just worry just work on figuring out what is ahead of us, not behind.”  


She smiled, never expecting that he would be so understanding, so changed from the angry man she had left on Earth in the arms and bed of Seven. “Come with me,” she gestured, standing from the couch.

Chakotay knew things could have gone much different between them. There was no point in hanging onto the past mistakes, the hurt, betrayal and anger. Seeing her again was the breath of fresh air he had needed to clear the path before him. Becoming acquainted with her motherly side was enough to give him perspective on why she had made the choices she did, why she had run. She had been afraid, probably for one of the first times in her life, and she had acted in the only way that had made sense to her. She had been a pregnant woman doing what she felt she had to in order to protect herself and her child. He had been a fool, had lost himself deep in the bottle. Now, all he wanted in life was to be where she was, to correct their wrongs together; to get to know the little girl who came to him in his dreams.  


When she gestured for him to follow her, he hadn’t known what to expect until she led him down the hall and then into the pretty little bedroom decorated in pinks and lavenders. Sleeping in the little bed was the most beautiful child he had ever laid eyes on. Maybe he was prejudice, but she was perfection. Her long, raven colored locks spilled across her pillow, shining in the moonlight that peeked through the lacy curtains, her tan complexion softened in the silvery beams. She was certainly theirs, an unmistakable blend of the best of their genetics. He wanted to hug her, press a kiss to her forehead, hear the bell-like laughter that had echoed in his head even upon waking, but he didn’t want to disturb her dreams. Ayasha Erin. His daughter. He felt himself swell with pride and love.  


When he finally tore his eyes from the beautiful slumbering princess, he found Kathryn watching him, her gaze was soft as a warm smile spread across her lips. He couldn’t read her as well as he used to, the green eyes throwing him off, but he was certain that any fear that had lingered in her about him taking Ayasha away from her had melted just as his feelings of resentment towards her had melted. All he felt in this moment was a revival of the love that had gone dormant in his heart. This woman, whom he had walked through the fires of hell for, had stood at her side as her right hand, her second, had loved her with every fiber of his being was his. Standing there at the bedside of their daughter, he didn’t care what color her eyes were, how she had changed her hair, she was his Kathryn Janeway and he loved her more in that moment than he ever had. He reached out for her, closing the distance between them in one long stride. Chakotay wrapped his arms around her and found her mouth in a kiss, sensations of passion and longing exploding from every pore in his body.  


She wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning into the kiss, feeding from his mouth like a woman starved of love and passion. He lifted her into his arms easily as she wrapped her legs around his waist, leaving no doubt at all about her shared desires. Chakotay carried her easily from their daughter’s room, careful to be as quiet as possible and not to wake her for right now, he had every intention of claiming her mother as his own once and for all.  


They tumbled down on her bed, urgently trying to release buttons and clasps, struggling to remove the necessary clothing. Intimacy would come later, this was about urgency and insatiable hunger. Nearly ten years had passed since they had found themselves in a similar situation, only this time there wasn’t a cramped little cot and a raging plasma storm outside. The only storm was the one of ardor building between them.  


His touch was like a distant memory come to life from the depths of her dreams and her world exploded when she felt him push into her, filling her so full unexpectedly that she cried out against his mouth. He stilled, allowing her body to adjust to his intrusion, feeling her swell and moisten against him, lubricating his path. She was ready for him, wrapping her legs around his waist to let him know; to pull him even deeper within herself.  


He took her to the apex over and over again, pumping rhythmically in and out of her; her body gripping him like a glove as though she had been molded just for him. As they moved, it was like a symphony, rising and falling against one another like melody and counterpoint. Their tempo quickened through the final measures until reaching an explosive conclusion with her crying out his name as he moaned hers. Muscles tightened then released as the floodgates crashed open, overflowing with the intensity of their love and passion for one another that had been pent up for better than half a decade.  


As they lay together, the sweat beginning to cool, their heart rates beginning to calm, he leaned over and pressed a kiss to her temple.  


“Please, please never leave me again, Kathryn.”  


She smiled in the darkness, thick with the aroma of their togetherness. “As long as you promise not to cast me off for the next blond Borg to give you whiplash.”  


He chuckled, snuggling her closer, “it’s a deal.”

Waking up with her in his arms confirmed that the previous night had not been a dream, though he was still taken aback by the dark hair and green eyes, but everything else, the feel of her skin under his hands; her scent told him that she was his Kathryn.  


“I certainly could get used to this,” he whispered in her ear as he nuzzled his nose in her hair.  


“Well, I hope you are prepared to get used to a lot of things,” she replied.  


“What do you mean?”  


The smile on her face was evident in her voice, “you’re about to find out.” She made sure the covers were securely over their nudeness as the stampede of little feet thundered down the hall way and the bedroom door swung open unexpectedly.  
Chakotay had certainly not been prepared for the bedraggled mess of their daughter to come bounding on the bed and it was apparent she hadn’t been prepared for a stranger in her mother’s bed. If she could have paused mid-jump, she would have merely from being startled.  


“Good morning, Ayasha,” she greeted her daughter who hesitated where she had landed between them.  


“Good morning,” she said, hesitant as she eyed the man sitting in the bed next to her. Her bright eyes lit up with sudden recognition as he stared back at her. “I know who you are! You’re my Daddy! I met you in my dreams! You taught me to tame the butterflies!” Then she leapt into his arms.  


“That’s right,” he whispered. Holding his little girl in his arms for the first time was just as magical for him as it would have been had she been only a moment old. And that she had dreamt of him, too, warmed his heart, especially to know that they had been sharing mutual dreams.  


Kathryn shook her head in amazement. She never failed to be awestruck by the mysticism that surrounded his people. It shouldn’t have surprised her that they had met in the dream world or a vision quest or something of the nature.  


“Did you come to take us home?” she asked.  


“You are home,” Kathryn quickly interjected. This was the only home she had ever known.  


“I mean to Earth so I can meet the other people I have seen in my dreams,” she replied.  


Chakotay laughed at Kathryn’s bewildered look. It was apparent his daughter was very in touch with the capabilities of her ancestral heritage and had been visiting the galaxy in her dreams. “With your mother’s permission, I think it is time we all go home.”  


Her heart warmed at the thought of formally introducing her daughter to her grandmother and new grandfather and her aunt and uncle and cousins and of course her extended Voyager family. “As hard as it is going to be to say goodbye to the friends we have made here, I think it is time we go home.”


	7. Epilogue – 18 Months Later

“You know, it is really not fair that you have scared me like that twice in a lifetime.”  


Kathryn cringed inwardly as she rocked on the porch swing. Part of her knew that Gretchen was going to be extremely slow to forgive her for taking off without word and leaving her to wonder for five years. “Mom, we have been over this. I made the best decision I could have at the time and under the duress I was under. Believe me when I say I am never leaving again.”  


“Don’t think I don’t hold that handsome husband of yours to blame a little bit as well.”  


_A little bit._ Those dimples worked their magic on her mother too and she had all but instantly forgiven him any wrongs. It just went to show that her husband really was the devil rogue when it came to women. He was able to swoon and _dimple_ his way out of anything, even the wrath of Gretchen Janeway Shanahan. Rather than bring up the old argument over the point that it was primarily Chakotay’s actions that had driven her off, she let it die on the autumn breeze as she took a long sip from her quickly-cooling Darjeeling.  


“Just so long as you don’t keep this one from me for five years, I’ll be satisfied,” Gretchen promised as she laid a hand to her daughter’s protruding belly.  


Kathryn smiled, watching as her beautiful Ayasha jumped into the pile of leaves her grandpa and father had just finished raking up. Six months ago she had gotten the shock of her life when the Doctor had informed her that she was pregnant. She had thought her child-bearing years were behind her and had not considered that she and Chakotay would be blessed with more children, but as they say, the universe works in mysterious ways.  


“Again! Again!” Ayasha cried out with laughter in her voice as she finished destroying the big pile of leaves.  


“We worked for two hours to get those leaves piled up, Ayasha,” Patrick told her sternly, giving her his best disapproving look.  


Ayasha’s expression fell from her face as she gazed up at him with her huge blue eyes, pleading a reprieve from having destroyed their leaf pile. She had been watching them, stalking their pile of leaves as they had finished and had imagined it to be great fun to leap into it, sending leaves flying everywhere.  


Patrick broke into a hearty laugh. “I just can’t do it. I can’t even pretend to be angry with her!” he told his son-in-law. “Now I know what Edward must have gone through with Kathryn growing up.”  


Chakotay joined the laughter. “Believe me, she still knows how to use that look, too.”  


“You’re doomed. I guess you should count your blessings that you’ll soon have a son on your side. I don’t know how you would manage having three Janeway women on your hands, especially if they all master _the look_.”  


Ayasha stood up from the leaf pile and placed her hands on her hips. “Grandpa, that was not very nice to make me think you were angry with me,” she admonished.  


“I have been on the receiving end of _that_ look more times than I care to remember,” Chakotay smirked, amused at how his daughter perfectly mimicked her mother’s stance and death glare. “She’s going to make fresh-faced Ensigns cower some day.”  


“I imagine so.” To Ayasha, he leaned down and scooped her up and tossed her into the air above his head, rewarded with a shriek of laughter. “And you, little lady, how about we go talk Grandma into making us some hot chocolate before rake those leaves back up for you to jump in?”  


“Yes, yes!” she cried out, spreading her arms out as he tossed her into the air again. She felt as though she could fly.  


“But only if you forgive me!”  


“I forgive! I forgive!” she cried out, breathless from excitement.  


Patrick swung her down into his arms and pressed a kiss to her forehead before steadying her on his feet. “Now go ask Grandma nicely. I’ll bet if you are really nice, she may even have a batch of caramel brownies waiting for you.”  


Ayasha’s eyes lit up like star-bursts as she took off towards the porch where her grandma and mother were sitting quietly on the swing. The mere mention of caramel brownies was enough to make her mouth water.  


“We are lucky men, Chakotay. It’s not often that men are given second chances at happiness,” Patrick said as they approached the porch.  


Chakotay simply smiled, watching as his daughter dashed inside ahead of her grandmother and as his wife, slower to get up, paused to wait for them. He lovingly gazed at her, swelling with pride as she absent-mindedly dropped a hand to the swell at her belly. Patrick was certainly right. He had been lucky enough to be afforded a second chance at happiness after nearly screwing up. He was glad he never stopped looking for her and Ayasha after they had disappeared.  


Kathryn smiled as her stepfather and husband approached. Five years ago, she never could have imagined life would have taken the turn it had. She had never counted on Chakotay finding her and Ayasha, but he had. The universe had a funny way of working things out. If there was an afterlife, she hoped that her father was gazing down from there and was happy with how things had worked out. Patrick was good for her mother and made her laugh and smile like she hadn’t since Edward had passed. She sent a silent “I love you” to her daddy and then a silent “thank you” to the woman who had broken all barriers to give them the chance at a different life and a different reality. If it hadn’t been for the Admiral Janeway of a different time line, she never would have found the happiness with her daughter, her husband and their son on the way. That was a debt she knew she would never be able to repay.  


She took Chakotay’s arm and he paused with her on the porch, gazing in at their daughter as she carefully stirred her hot chocolate and sculpted the mountain of whipped cream floating on top of the dark liquid.  


“Are you two coming?” Patrick asked, holding the door open for them.  


“In a moment, Dad,” she replied, feeling comfortable that Edward would not be offended or betrayed in her heart. She waited and watched as he stepped into the kitchen and pressed a kiss to Gretchen’s forehead then offered to help as she produced a hot pan of caramel brownies.  


“I talked to Ah’Latica today,” she told him.  


“How is she?” Chakotay knew she had been missing the friend she had made while on Cerrion and kept in communication with her as often as possible.  


“She told me that she and her mate Tel’Re’Theit are also expecting a son in a couple of months. She even let slip that they have planned a trip to Earth after the baby comes. Delsie has been anxious to visit Ayasha. She said she would be bringing Bayleigha to help her with the children.”  


“That is wonderful, Kathryn,” he replied, brushing a lock of long auburn hair from her face, happy to be gazing into blue eyes again rather than green.  


“I hope you don’t mind, but I offered them to stay with us while they were here.” She had been completely honest with him about Tel’Re’Theit’s interest in her and what had almost happened.  


Chakotay snickered at her concern. “I doubt I have anything to be concerned about.” He laid a hand on her belly, receiving a healthy kick from his son. “Come on, I think your mother will be sore at us if we hold up dinner.”  


“I think you know this family well,” she smirked, grabbing the handle of the door.  


“I come by that right, after all, I spent seven years in the Delta Quadrant with you,” he teased.  


She playfully swatted his shoulder as they joined her parents and their daughter in the kitchen. “And yet, you still spent five years after searching for me? Either Cupid had his way with you or you are a damned fool!”  


“I’ll get back to you on that one,” he jovially replied and, as he expected, was rewarded with the infamous look as they settled into their seats to count their blessings and give thanks to the stars and Spirits that guided their paths and allowed them second chances at lives of happiness. 

[ (Approximation of Ayasha Janeway - Age 3)](http://katesfire.mysite.com/images/ayasha4.jpg)

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End file.
